“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”

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

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”

“We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.”

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

“It would be very interesting to preserve photographically not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream.”