Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.

To live is to feel oneself lost.

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

I am I plus my circumstances.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.