I don't care who you are, everyone has been through it - that feeling where you'd like to be someone else.
Out of limitations, new forms emerge
Truth exists; only lies are invented.
To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm. . . If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.
I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness. . I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact.
The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.
There are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.
When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.
My only job has been to say that you have to, try different things and let yourself become a different person, have experiences.