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

Good artists copy; great artists steal.

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.

Basically the French are all peasants.

Now there is fame! Of all / hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public / fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is...

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” ― Pablo Picasso

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make...

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg.

Drink to me

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

Everything you can imagine is real.

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...

You know, it’s just like being a peddler. You want two breasts? Well, here you are — two breasts. We must see to it that the man looking at the picture has at hand everything...

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...

I don’t paint things the way I see them, but the way I think them.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

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

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

If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so...

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.

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

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

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

As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes – and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done

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

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

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

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite — that particular peach is but a detail.

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

Accidents, try to change them — it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.

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

Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.

It takes a long time to grow young.

When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

It is personality with a penny’s worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

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

You can’t run a business without taking risks.

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

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

Accidents, try to change them it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.

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

On devient jeune à soixante ans. Malheureusement, c’est trop tard

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will...

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.

My work is like a diary. To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors life.

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

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...

I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso,