To be interesting, one has to provoke.

[I am a] contradictory and paradoxical man.

Right now I'm the greatest. I don't say this through vanity. It's just that the rest are so bad.

If I'm going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything!

I was never capable of being an average pupil. I would either seem refractory to any teaching and give the impression of being completely dumb or I would fling myself on my work with a frenzy, a patience, and a willingness to learn that astonished everybody. But to awaken my zeal, it was necessary to offer me something I liked. Once my appetite had been whetted, I became ravenously hungry.

Dali was Renaissance man converted to psychoanalysis.

Whatever happens, my audience mustn't know whether I am spoofing or being serious; and likewise I mustn't know either. I am in a constant interrogation; when does the deep and philosophically valid Dali begin, and where does the looney and preposterous Dali end?