Pablo Picasso Quotes

Rhythm is a perception of time... when drawing, the tiredness of the hand is a rhythm.

[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am

Whether he wants it or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposes on him character and appearance.

It is important to remember that great things have no fear of time. We've got to let go of the idea that what we want to manifest has to be done on our time schedule.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

I love bats! Women are scared of them. They think bats can get caught in their hair, don't they? But bats are the most beautiful of animals, extraordinarily delicate. Have you observed their brilliant little eyes, gleaming with intelligence, and their skin, silky as velvet? And look at all these delicate little bones.

We can see the light but we are still inside the tunnel, ... We have not been able to get to all the communities.

What I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion.

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

How often have I found that wanting to use blue, I didn't have it so I used a red instead of the blue.

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg.

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

Braque always said that the only thing that counts, in painting, is the intention, and it's true. What counts is what one wants to do, and not what one does. That's what's important.

Art is lies that tell the truth.

Those who attempts to explain a picture are on the wrong track most of the time.

If you are trying to find something, it means you haven't got it. And if you find it simply by looking for it, that means it's false.

Go and do the things you can't. That is how you get to do them.

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be.

If you're stuck in a painting, then stop and draw something else. Draw a flower and put your love into that flower. Then your powers will come back again.

We are all born children- the trick is remaining one.

Music and art are the guiding lights of the world.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

Whatever is most abstract may perhaps be the summit of reality.

All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art.

The only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.

I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.

When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.

I imitate everyone except myself.

...why did Plato say that poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an antisocial being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way.... and if he really is an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.

In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by deeds and not by reasons. What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working.

I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.

I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.

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.

Because I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.