When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection.

If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.

In the end there is only Matisse.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

How could Michelangelo have seen his David in a block of marble? Man began to make images only because he discovered them nearly formed around him, already within reach. He saw them in a bone, in the bumps of a cave, in a piece of wood. One form suggested a woman to him, another a buffalo, still another the head of a monster.

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax.

There's nothing more difficult than a line.