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Do You Think It Interests Me That This Painting Represents Two Figures? These Two Figures Existed, They Exist No More. The Sight Of Them Gave Me An Initial Emotion, Little By Little Their Real Presence Grew Indistinct They Became A Fiction For Me, Then They Disappeared, Or Rather, Were Turned Into Problems Of All Kinds. For Me They Are No Longer Two Figures But Shapes And Colours, Don't Misunderstand Me, Shapes And Colours, Though, That Sum Up The Idea Of The Two Figures And Preserve The Vibration Of Their Existence.

-Pablo Picasso

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Do You Think It

Pablo Picasso

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Do You Think It Interests Me That This Painting Represents Two Figures? These Two Figures Existed, They Exist No More. The Sight Of Them Gave Me An Initial Emotion, Little By Little Their Real Presence Grew Indistinct They Became A Fiction For Me, Then They Disappeared, Or Rather, Were Turned Into Problems Of All Kinds. For Me They Are No Longer Two Figures But Shapes And Colours, Don't Misunderstand Me, Shapes And Colours, Though, That Sum Up The Idea Of The Two Figures And Preserve The Vibration Of Their Existence.

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It Would Be Very Curious To Record By Means Of Photographs, Not The Stage Of The Picture, But Its Metamorphoses. Perhaps One Would Perceive The Path Taken By The Mind In Order To Put Its Dreams Into A Concrete Form. But What Is Really Very Curious Is To Observe That Fundamentally The Picture Does Not Change, That Despite Appearances The Initial Vision Remains Almost Intact.

The Goal I Proposed Myself In Making Cubism? To Paint And Nothing More... With A Method Linked Only To My Thought... Neither The Good Nor The True; Neither The Useful Nor The Useless.

All Children Paint Like Geniuses. What Do We Do To Them That So Quickly Dulls This Ability?

I Do Not Evolve, I Am.

One Never Knows What One Is Going To Do. One Starts A Painting And Then It Becomes Something Quite Different.

Anything New, Anything Worth Doing, Can't Be Recognized.

Anything Worth Doing

Style Is Often Something Which Locks The Painter Into The Same Vision, The Same Technique, The Same Formula During Years And Years, Sometimes During One's Whole Lifetime.

Painting Is Not Made To Decorate Apartments. It's An Offensive And Defensive Weapon Against The Enemy. (about Guernica).

Everything Is A Miracle. It Is A Miracle That One Does Not Dissolve In One's Bath Like A Lump Of Sugar.

Good Taste Is The Enemy Of Creativity.

I Try To Paint What I Have Found And Not What I Look For. In Art, Intentions Are Of Little Importance.

A Good Picture, Any Picture, Has To Be Bristling With Razor Blades.

As Far As I Am Concerned, A Painting Speaks For Itself. What Is The Use Of Giving Explanations, When All Is Said And Done? A Painter Has Only One Language.

I Begin With An Idea And Then It Becomes Something Else.

I Do Not Seek. I Find.

Never Copy Yourself, Always Copy Someone Else.

If All The Ways I Have Been Along Were Marked On A Map And Joined Up With A Line, It Might Represent A Minotaur.

Don't Waste Your Youth Growing Up.

Manifesting Takes Place From Spirit. It Doesn't Take Place From Form, From The Physical World. You've Got To Know That What You Want To Manifest Will Occur.

I Paint The Way Someone Bites His Fingernails; For Me, Painting Is A Bad Habit Because I Don't Know Nor Can I Do Anything Else.

Painting Is Stronger Than Me, It Makes Me Do It's Bidding.

Each Time I Undertake To Paint A Picture I Have A Sensation Of Leaping Into Space. I Never Know Whether I Shall Fall On My Feet. It Is Only Later That I Begin To Estimate More Exactly The The Effect Of My Work.

Sculpture Is The Best Comment That A Painter Can Make On Painting.

Two Of The Most Frustrated Trades Are Dentists And Photographers - Dentists Because They Want To Be Doctors, And Photographers Because They Want To Be Painters.

All Things Considered, There Is Only Matisse.

There's No Such Thing As A Bad Picasso, But Some Are Less Good Than Others.

For Being A Bad Student I Was Banished To The 'calaboose' - A Bare Cell With Whitewashed Walls And A Bench To Sit On. I Liked It There, Because I Took Along A Sketch Pad And Drew Incessantly I Could Have Stayed There Forever Drawing Without Stopping

If It's Good, It's Mine. If It's Bad, It's A Fake.

To Know What You're Going To Draw, You Have To Begin Drawing.

I Have A Real Passion For Bones. I Have Many Others In Boisgeloup: Skeletons Of Birds, Dog's And Sheep's Heads. I Even Have A Rhinoceros Skull.

Are We To Paint What's On The Face, What's Inside The Face, Or What's Behind It?

This Idea Of Art For Art's Sake Is A Hoax.

An Idea Is A Point Of Departure And No More. As Soon As You Elaborate It, It Becomes Transformed By Thought.

They Are Not Men, They Are Not Women, They Are Americans.

People Want To Find A 'meaning' In Everything And Everyone. That's The Disease Of Our Age...

I Am Only A Public Entertainer Who Understands His Time.

An Artist Must Forget Painting When He Paints. That's The Only Way He Will Do Original Work.

Through Art We Express Our Conception Of What Nature Is Not.

Imitators? All Right! Disciples If You Like. But Disciples Be Damned. It's Not Interesting.

The Trouble Is, We've Been Taught What To See And How To Render What We See. If Only We Could Be In The Position Of Those Men Who Did Those Wonderful Drawings In Lascaux And Altimira!

"picasso" Is Of Italian Origin, As You Know. And The Name A Person Bears Or Adopts Has Its Importance.

When I Was A Kid I Drew Like Michelangelo. It Took Me Years To Learn To Draw Like A Kid.

The People No Longer Seek Consolation In Art. But The Refined People, The Rich, The Idlers Seek The New, The Extraordinary, The Extravagant, The Scandalous. I Have Contented These People With All The Many Bizarre Things That Come Into My Head. And The Less They Understand, The More They Admire It. By Amusing Myself With All These Games, All This Nonsense, All These Picture Puzzles, I Became Famous... I Am Only A Public Entertainer Who Has Understood His Time.

I Like All Paintings. I Always Look At The Paintings, Good Or Bad, In Barbershops, Furniture Stores, Provincial Hotels. I'm Like A Drinker Who Needs Wine. As Long As It Is Wine, It Doesn't Matter Which Wine.

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.

Braque Always Said That The Only Thing That Counts, In Painting, Is The Intention, And It's True. What Counts Is What One Wants To Do, And Not What One Does. That's What's Important.

To Be Young, Really Young, Takes A Very Long Time.

Art Is The Elimination Of The Unnecessary.

Art Sweeps The Everyday Dust From Your Soul.

It Isn't Up To The Painter To Define The Symbols. Otherwise It Would Be Better If He Wrote Them Out In So Many Words! The Public Who Look At The Picture Must Interpret The Symbols As They Understand Them.

If You're Stuck In A Painting, Then Stop And Draw Something Else. Draw A Flower And Put Your Love Into That Flower. Then Your Powers Will Come Back Again.

Every Child Is An Artist. The Problem Is How To Remain An Artist Once We Grow Up.

Art Is Not Chaste. Those Ill Prepared Should Be Allowed No Contact With Art. Art Is Dangerous. If It Is Chaste, It Is Not Art.

You Cannot Go Against Nature. She Is Stronger Than The Strongest Of Men. We Can Permit Ourselves Some Liberties, But In Details Only.

The World Today Doesn't Make Sense, So Why Should I Paint Pictures That Do?

To Blossom Forth, A Work Of Art Must Ignore Or Rather Forget All The Rules.

I'm Not A Developer; I Am.

What A Trade! Poor Painters! They Always Wish To Be Understood, And They Are Analysed Instead.

Painting Is A Blind Man's Profession. He Paints Not What He Sees, But What He Feels, What He Tells Himself About What He Has Seen.

A Painting Is Not Thought Out In Advance. While It Is Being Done, It Changes As One’s Thoughts Change. And When It’s Finished, It Goes On Changing, According To The State Of Mind Of Whoever Is Looking At It

The Painter Goes Through States Of Fullness And Evaluation. That Is The Whole Secret Of Art.

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.

What I Capture In Spite Of Myself Interests Me More Than My Own Ideas.

Variation Does Not Mean Evolution. If An Artist Varies His Mode Of Expression This Only Means That He Has Changed His Manner Of Thinking, And In Changing, It Might Be For The Better Or It Might Be For The Worse.

The Connoisseur Of Painting Gives Only Bad Advice To The Painter. For That Reason I Have Given Up Trying To Judge Myself.

Action Is The Fundamental Key To Success.

[in Developing Your Potential] ... I Don't Develop; I Am

There Ought To Be An Absolute Dictatorship... A Dictatorship Of Painters... A Dictatorship Of One Painter... To Suppress All Those Who Have Betrayed Us.

What Might Be Taken For A Precocious Genius Is The Genius Of Childhood. When The Child Grows Up, It Disappears Without A Trace. It May Happen That This Boy Will Become A Real Painter Some Day, Or Even A Great Painter. But Then He Will Have To Begin Everything Again, From Zero.

The Hidden Harmony Is Better Than The Obvious.

The Essential In This Time Of Moral Poverty Is To Create Enthusiasm.

I Paint What I Think, Not What I See.

Whatever Is Most Abstract May Perhaps Be The Summit Of Reality.

When One Starts From A Portrait And Seeks By Successive Eliminations To Find Pure Form... One Inevitably Ends Up With An Egg.

Youth Has No Age.

The More Technique You Have, The Less You Have To Worry About It. The More Technique There Is, The Less There Is.

Art Is A Lie That Makes Us Realise Truth ... That Is Given Us To Understand.

In The End There Is Only Matisse.

When We Did Cubist Paintings, Our Intention Was Not To Produce Cubist Paintings But To Express What Was Within Us. No One Laid Down A Course Of Action For Us, And Our Friends The Poets Followed Our Endeavour Attentively But They Never Dictated It To Us.

Some Painters Transform The Sun Into A Yellow Spot, Others Transform A Yellow Spot Into The Sun.

Colors, Like Features, Follow The Changes Of The Emotions.

And Fame, For A Painter Means Sales, Gains, Fortune, Riches. And Today, As You Know, I Am Celebrated. I Am Rich.

When There's Dust Missing Here Or There, It's Because Someone Has Touched My Things. I See Immediately Someone Has Been There. And It's Because I Live Constantly With Dust, In Dust, That I Prefer To Wear Gray Suits, The Only Color On Which It Leaves No Trace.

To Draw You Must Close Your Eyes And Sing.

Sex And Art Are The Same Thing.

When You Are Young And Without Success, You Have Only A Few Friends. Then, Later On, When You Are Rich And Famous, You Still Have A Few... If You Are Lucky.

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.

...art Is Something Subversive. It's Something That Should Not Be Free. Art And Liberty, Like The Fire Of Prometheus, Are Things That One Must Steal, To Be Used Against The Established Order.

I Don't Know In Advance What I Am Going To Put On Canvas Any More Than I Decide Beforehand What Colours I Am Going To Use.

Every Child Is An Artist. The Problem Is How To Remain An Artist While Still Achieving Milestones And Outcomes As Required By Certain Funders And Policy-makers.

What Do You Think An Artist Is? An Imbecile Who Has Only His Eyes If He's A Painter, Or Ears If He's A Musician, Or A Lyre At Every Level Of His Heart If He's A Poet, Or Even, If He's A Boxer, Just His Muscles? On The Contrary, He's At The Same Time A Political Being, Constantly Alive To Heart-rending, Burning, Or Happy Events In The World.

I Don't Own Any Of My Own Paintings Because A Picasso Original Costs Several Thousand Dollars And That's A Luxury I Cannot Afford.

People Want Art. And They Are Given It. But The Less Art There Is In Painting The More Painting There Is.

Action Is The Foundation Of All Success.

An Artist Must Be Very Careful Not To Look For Models. As Soon As One Artist Takes Another As Model, He Is Lost. There Is No Other Point Of Departure Than Reality.

The Important Thing Is To Create. Nothing Else Matters; Creation Is All.

You Mustn't Expect Me To Repeat Myself. My Past Doesn't Interest Me. I Would Rather Copy Others Than Copy Myself. In That Way I Should At Least Be Giving Them Something New. I Love Discovering Things.

It Means Nothing To Me. I Have No Opinion About It, And I Don't Care.

If I Paint A Wild Horse, You Might Not See The Horse... But Surely You Will See The Wildness!

I Want To Create A Cat Like The Real Cats I See Crossing The Streets, Not Like Those You See In Houses. They Have Nothing In Common. The Cat Of The Streets Has Bristling Fur. It Runs Like A Fiend, And If It Looks At You, You Think It Is Going To Jump In Your Face.

I've Reached The Moment Where The Movement Of My Thought Interests Me More Than The Thought Itself.

If You Are Trying To Find Something, It Means You Haven't Got It. And If You Find It Simply By Looking For It, That Means It's False.

I Hate It When People Pilfer My Things.

You Have To Have An Idea Of What You Are Going To Do, But It Should Be A Vague Idea.

Everyone Wants To Understand Art. Why Don't We Try To Understand The Song Of A Bird? Why Do We Love The Night, The Flowers, Everything Around Us, Without Trying To Understand Them? But In The Case Of A Painting, People Think They Have To Understand.

Matisse Makes A Drawing, Then He Makes A Copy Of It. He Copies It Five Times, Ten Times, Always Clarifying The Line. He’s Convinced That The Last, The Most Stripped Down, Is The Best, The Purest, The Definitive One; And In Fact, Most Of The Time, It Was The First. In Drawing, Nothing Is Better Than The First Attempt.

It's Not What The Artist Does That Counts; It's What He Is.

Who Sees The Human Face Correctly: The Photographer, The Mirror, Or The Painter?

You're Either A Goddess ... Or A Doormat.

What Does It Mean For A Painter To Paint In The Manner Of So-and-so Or To Actually Imitate Someone Else? What's Wrong With That? On The Contrary, It's A Good Idea. You Should Constantly Try To Paint Like Someone Else. But The Thing Is, You Can't! You Would Like To. You Try. But It Turns Out To Be A Botch... And It's At The Very Moment You Make A Botch Of It That You're Yourself.

For Those Who Know How To Read, I Have Painted My Autobiography

The Only Thing Emanating From My Pictures Should Be Emotion.

For Me Painting Is A Dramatic Action In The Course Of Which Reality Finds Itself Split Apart

When German Soldiers Used To Come To My Studio And Look At My Pictures Of Guernica, They'd Ask 'did You Do This?'. And I'd Say, 'no, You Did.'

Art Is Never Chaste. It Ought To Be Forbidden To Ignorant Innocents, Never Allowed Into Contact With Those Not Sufficiently Prepared. Yes, Art Is Dangerous. Where It Is Chaste, It Is Not Art.

We Didn't Want To Sign The Painting Itself, That Would Have Interfered With The Composition. And Even Later, For That Reason Or For Another, I Sometimes Marked My Canvases On The Back. If You Don't See My Signature And The Date, Madam, It's Because The Frame Is Hiding It.

If Only We Could Pull Out Our Brain And Use Only Our Eyes.

How Could Michelangelo Have Seen His David In A Block Of Marble? Man Began To Make Images Only Because He Discovered Them Nearly Formed Around Him, Already Within Reach. He Saw Them In A Bone, In The Bumps Of A Cave, In A Piece Of Wood. One Form Suggested A Woman To Him, Another A Buffalo, Still Another The Head Of A Monster.

Every Now And Then One Paints A Picture That Seems To Have Opened A Door And Serves As A Stepping Stone To Other Things.

I Put In My Pictures Everything I Like. So Much The Worse For The Things - They Have To Get Along With One Another.

It Is The Object Which Aroused The Artist, Stimulated His Ideas And Set Of His Emotions. These Ideas And Emotions Will Be Imprisoned In His Work For Good.

In Life You Throw A Ball. You Hope It Will Reach A Wall And Bounce Back So You Can Throw It Again. You Hope Your Friends Will Provide That Wall.

I'd Like To Live Like A Poor Man With A Lot Of Money.

Paradise Is To Love Many Things With A Passion.

What Is A Face, Really? Its Own Photo? Its Make-up? Or Is It A Face As Painted By Such Or Such Painter? That Which Is In Front? Inside? Behind? And The Rest? Doesn't Everyone Look At Himself In His Own Particular Way? Deformations Simply Do Not Exist.

The Best Calculation Is The Absence Of Calculation. Once You Have Attained A Certain Level Of Recognition, Others Generally Figure That When You Do Something, It's For An Intelligent Reason. So It's Really Foolish To Plot Out Your Movements Too Carefully In Advance. You're Better Off Acting Capriciously.

When They Say That I Am Too Old To Make A Thing, I Try To Make It Immediately.

You Have To Start Somewhere. You Can Always Erase Reality Later On.

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.

It Is Personality With A Penny's Worth Of Talent. Error Which Chances To Rise Above The Commonplace.

I Hate That Aesthetic Game Of The Eye And The Mind, Played By These Connoisseurs, These Mandarins Who "appreciate" Beauty. What Is Beauty, Anyway? There's No Such Thing. I Never "appreciate," Any More Than I "like." I Love It Or I Hate.

The Chief Enemy Of Creativity Is 'good' Sense.

Everything We Can Dream Can Be Real.

Action Is The Foundational Key To All Success.

We Can See The Light But We Are Still Inside The Tunnel, ... We Have Not Been Able To Get To All The Communities.

I Am A Communist And My Painting Is A Communist Painting. But If I Were A Shoemaker, Royalist Or Communist Or Anything Else, I Would Not Necessarily Hammer My Shoes In Any Special Way To Show My Politics.

Art Is A Lie That Makes Us Realize Truth.

What I Achieve The First Day Can Be Perfectly Valid, But It Is Not Satisfying. If I Can Go That Far Spontaneously, Then I Must Shed That Result As An Old Skin And Inquire Further Into The Unknown, Or At Least The Not-yet-known-to-myself.

To Make Oneself Hated Is More Difficult Than To Make Oneself Loved.

I Have Discovered Photography. Now I Can Kill Myself. I Have Nothing Else To Learn.

I Have Never Had Time For The Idea Of Searching. Whenever I Wanted To Express Something, I Did So Without Thinking Of The Past Or The Future.

Photography Has Arrived At The Point Where It Is Capable Of Liberating Painting From All Literature, From The Anecdote, And Even From The Subject. In Any Case, A Certain Aspect Of The Subject Now Belongs To The Domain Of Photography. So Shouldn't Painters Profit From Their Newly Acquired Liberty, And Make Use Of It To Do Other Things?

When I Work I Relax; Doing Nothing Or Entertaining Visitors Makes Me Tired.

I'm Always Doing Things I Can't Do. That's How I Get To Do Them.

Painting Isn't Made For The Decoration Of Apartments; It Is A Weapon To Be Used Offensively And Defensively Against The Enemy.

I Work With Few Colors, What Creates The Illusion Of Quantity Is That They Fell In The Right Place.

Others Have Seen What Is And Asked Why. I Have Seen What Could Be And Asked Why Not.

To Model An Object Is To Possess It.

I Simply Painted Images Of What Was Before My Eyes; It Is For Others To Find Hidden Meaning In Them.

Music And Art Are The Guiding Lights Of The World.

Neither Is There Figurative And Non-figurative Art. All Things Appear To Us In The Shape Of Forms. Even In Metaphysics Ideas Are Expressed By Forms. Well Then, Think How Absurd It Would Be To Think Of Painting Without The Imagery Of Forms. A Figure, An Object, A Circle, Are Forms; They Affect Us More Or Less Intensely.

Enough Of Art. It's Art That Kills Us. People No Longer Want To Do Painting: They Make Art.

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.

Photographers, Along With Dentists, Are The Two Professions Never Satisfied With What They Do. Every Dentist Would Like To Be A Doctor And Inside Every Photographer Is A Painter Trying To Get Out.

There Is No Abstract Art. You Must Always Start With Something. Afterward You Can Remove All Traces Of Reality.

Why Assume That To Look Is To See?

We Are All Born Children- The Trick Is Remaining One.

The Only Pictorial Matter That Is Of Interest To Me Is The Matter And Sentiments Brought About By The Work Itself.

One Starts To Get Young At The Age Of Sixty And Then It Is Too Late.

It Is Your Work In Life That Is The Ultimate Seduction.

It Is A Well-known Fact That We See The Faults In Other's Works More Readily Than We Do In Our Own.

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 Revolutionary Artist Does Not Only Focus On The Negative Aspects Of Capitalist Lives, But Also Creates Visions Of A Revolutionary Future.

Whatever The Source Of Emotion That Drives Me To Create, I Want To Give It A Form Which Has Some Connection With The Visible World, Even If It Is Only To Wage War On That World....i Want My Paintings To Be Able To Defend Themselves To Resist The Invader, Just As Though There Were Razor Blades On All Surfaces So No One Could Touch Them Without Cutting His Hands.

The Artist Must Know The Manner Whereby To Convince Others Of The Truthfulness Of His Lies.

A Plagiarist Steals From One Person. A True Artist Steals From Everybody.

If I Knew What The Meaning Of Art Was, I Wouldn't Tell You.

Everyone Wants To Understand Art. Why Not Try To Understand The Song Of A Bird? ...people Who Try To Explain Pictures Are Usually Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

If I Could Say This I Wouldn't Have To Paint.

The Parthenon Is Really Only A Farmyard Over Which Someone Put A Roof; Colonades And Sculptures Were Added Because There Were People In Athens Who Happened To Be Working And Wanted To Express Themselves.

If There Were Only One Truth, You Couldn't Paint A Hundred Canvases On The Same Theme.

To Me There Is No Past Or Future In Art. If A Work Of Art Does Not Live In The Present, It Must Not Be Considered At All.

Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answers.

I Don't Seek, I Find.

Nothing Can Be Done Without Solitude. I've Created My Own Solitude Which Nobody Suspects

It Seems Strange To Me That Someone Thought Of Making Marble Statues.

All Human Beings Are Born With The Same Creative Potential. Most People Squander Theirs Away On A Million Superfluous Things. I Expend Mine On One Thing And One Thing Only: My Art.

When It Comes Right Down To It, All You Have Is Your Self. Your Self Is A Sun With A Thousand Rays.

I Am Always Doing That Which I Cannot Do, In Order That I May Learn How To Do It.

In Art, There Is Neither Past Nor Future. The Art That Is Not In The Present Will Never Be.

Painting Isn't A Question Of Sensibility; It's A Matter Of Seizing The Power, Taking Over From Nature, Not Expecting Her To Supply You With Information And Good Advice.

I Don't Develop; I Am.

The Meaning Of Life Is To Find Your Gift. The Purpose Of Life Is To Give It Away.

Inspiration Exists, But You Have To Find It Working.

It Is Important To Remember That Great Things Have No Fear Of Time. We've Got To Let Go Of The Idea That What We Want To Manifest Has To Be Done On Our Time Schedule.

Forcing Yourself To Use Restricted Means Is The Sort Of Restraint That Liberates Invention. It Obliges You To Make A Kind Of Progress That You Can't Even Imagine In Advance.

I Understand How You Could See Something In The Root Of A Tree, A Crack In The Wall, In An Eroded Stone Or Pebble. But Marble? It Comes Off In Blocks And Doesn't Evoke Any Image. It Does Not Inspire.

Almost Every Evening, Either I Went To [georges] Braque's Studio Or Braque Came To Mine. Each Of Us Had To See What The Other Had Done During The Day. We Criticized Each Other's Work. A Canvas Wasn't Finished Unless Both Of Us Felt It Was.

Today, As You Know, I Am Famous And Very Rich. But When I Am Alone With Myself, I Haven't The 'courage' To Consider Myself An Artist, In The Great And Ancient Sense Of That Word... I Am Only A Public Entertainer, Who Understands His Age.

In One Way Or Another, I Always Marked My Pictures. But There Were Times When I Put My Signature On The Back Of The Canvas. All My Works From The Cubist Period, Until About 1914, Have My Name And The Date On The Back Side Of The Stretcher. I Know Someone Spread The Story That In Céret, Braque And I Decided Not To Sign Our Pictures Anymore. But That's Just A Legend!

Ah, Good Taste! What A Dreadful Thing! Taste Is The Enemy Of Creativeness.

There's Nothing Worse Than A Brilliant Beginning.

If I Had Known There Was Such A Thing As Islamic Calligraphy, I Would Never Have Started To Paint. I Have Strived To Reach The Highest Levels Of Artistic Mastery, But I Found That Islamic Calligraphy Was There Ages Before I Was.

For A Long Time I Limited Myself To One Colour - As A Form Of Discipline.

What I Find Horrible Nowadays Is That People Are Always Trying To Find A Personality For Themselves. Nobody Bothers About What You Might Call A Painter's Ideal... The Kind That's Always Existed... No. They Couldn't Care Less About That.

The Earth Doesn't Have A Housekeeper To Do The Dusting.

When I Paint I Feel That All The Artists Of The Past Are Behind Me.

But When I Am Alone, I Do Not Have The Effrontery To Consider Myself An Artist At All, Not In The Grand Old Meaning Of The Word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya Were Great Painters. I Am Only A Public Clown-a Mountebank. I Have Understood My Time And Have Exploited The Imbecility, The Vanity, The Greed Of My Contemporaries. It Is A Bitter Confession, This Confession Of Mine, More Painful Than It May Seem. But At Least And At Last It Does Have The Merit Of Being Honest.

Painting Is Just Another Way Of Keeping A Diary.

Because I Cannot Work Except In Solitude, It Is Necessary That I Live My Work And That Is Impossible Except In Solitude.

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