Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.

When you begin a picture you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur.

I draw like other people bite their nails.

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.

Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.

For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography