Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

The first half of life is learning to be an adult-the second half is learning to be a child.

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.

Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

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.