When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.

Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

There's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning.

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.