I do not evolve, I AM.

Imagination is real.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

We’re constantly moving dust from one place to another, only to have it replaced by more dust — entropy always wins.

I’m not a developer; I am.

You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words.

We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years. (Upon exiting the Lascaux cave, France)

I want to live like a poor man with lots of money.

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

Art is a lie that reveals the truth.

It takes a long time to grow young.

My hand tells me what I’m thinking.

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.

It took me a lifetime.

When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing.

I am always doing things I can’t do. That is how I get to do them.

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.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

The older you get, the stronger the wind gets — and it’s always in your face.

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.

We have a definite but unknown quantity of experience at our disposal. As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out and once it starts, it cannot stop until it’s all gone.

To find is the thing.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by deeds and not by reasons. What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.

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

Sex and art are the same thing.

Painting it’s a blind man profession. Painter is painting not what he sees but what he feels.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it…myself included.

Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do it’s bidding.

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

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

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

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

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

You don’t make art, you find it

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).

There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes.

Anything new, anything worth doing, can’t be recognized.

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.

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

Give me a museum and I’ll fill it.

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 the elimination of the unnecessary.

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not melt in one’s bath.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.

All art is erotic.

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

We don’t grow older we grow riper.

Go and do the things you can’t. That is how you get to do them.

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

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

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

If I don’t have red, I use blue.

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

People want to find a meaning in everything and everyone. That’s the disease of our age.

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

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.

Youth has no age.

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.

To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.

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

I do not seek. I find.

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

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

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

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

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

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

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

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

It takes a very long time to become young.

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.

When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

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

Everything you can imagine is real.

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

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

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.