My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.

Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!

Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

Action is the foundational key to all success.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

It takes a long time to become young.

Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.

One must act in painting as in life, directly.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.

The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face.

I do not seek. I find.

The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephantand the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.

When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.

Youth has no age.

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.