If I were to sign it now, I'd be committing forgery. I'd be putting my 1943 signature on a canvas painted in 1922.

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.

The only thing that's important is the legend created by the picture, and not whether it continues to exist itself.

What is conserved in the ground? Stone, bronze, ivory, bone, sometimes pottery. Never wood objects, no fabric or skins. That completely skews our notions about primitive man.

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

If I had known there was such a thing as Islamic Calligraphy, I would never have started to paint. I have strived to reach the highest levels of artistic mastery, but I found that Islamic Calligraphy was there ages before I was.

We have a definite but unknown quantity of experience at our disposal. As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out and once it starts, it cannot stop until it's all gone.