The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

There's nothing worse than talking about yourself to find out that you're not that interesting.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.

Love is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears; hatred is nothing.

Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Bright light is injurious to those who see nothing.

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.

You either love or you hate. You live in the middle, you get nothing.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

I don't know nothing about communism. But I know the Albanians loved me. Same reason as anyone else loves me. Because I made them laugh.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

I was a shy little girl, nothing like what I am now.

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.