I do not weep: I loathe tears, for they are a sign of slavery.

I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.

Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement... for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.

The important thing is first of all to have a real love for the visible world that lies outside ourselves as well as to know the deep secret of what goes on within ourselves.

My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.

Painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement.

There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.

Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.

Height, width, and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space.

The stronger and more intense my desire becomes to capture and record that which is unsayable, the more tightly my mouth stays shut.

I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.

Reciting part of a sutra with the desire to benefit others is like reciting a recipe in the hope it will prevent people from starving.

You can only really yell at the players you trust.

Other people have shrubbery in their gardens. You have a bottomless pit.

Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the same quarter.

Out of silence comes the greatest creativity. Not when we are rushing and panicking.

My television and movie career has also taken me all over the world. I've had great times in the Far East, Russia, South America and Sweden - where I met my wife of 55 years, Maj.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

He is coming! He is coming! Like a bridegroom from his room, Came the hero from his prison To the scaffold and the doom.