All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.

In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.

When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.

That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.

It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.

Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.

Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it.

When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it.

The form is always the measure of the obsession.

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

A great man is always willing to be little.

A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.

Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganizes society and creates constituencies of people around it.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Restrain yourself... and gloat in silence. I'll have no jubilation here. It is an impious thing to exult over the slain.

When we begin to lift the veils of censorship and repression in painting, a great deal of energy is unleashed.

In the military, as in any organization, giving the order might be the easiest part. Execution is the real game.

People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.

God evaluates by this criterion: How much love you invest in what you do is more important than how you do. The one who loves much is actually the one who does much.