Each thing we see hides something else we want to see.

Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I'd have been lying!

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

The purpose of art is mystery.

We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world.

Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.