I do things I don't know how to do in order to learn how to do them.

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the most beautiful objects of the "stone age" were made of skin, fabric, and especially wood. The "stone age" ought to be called the "wood age." How many African statues are made of stone, bone, or ivory? Maybe one in a thousand! And prehistoric man had no more ivory at his disposal than African tribes. Maybe even less. He must have had thousands of wooden fetishes, all gone now.

I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.

For me painting is a dramatic action in the course of which reality finds itself split apart

There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing. What is color?

My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.

You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.