It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.

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.

He would smile at her and welcome her home.

Last night I inhaled the fragrance of the Moon!

Prayer cannot be a substitution for action.

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

I'd like to have made one of those big splashy Technicolor musicals with Rita Hayworth.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

My inspiration always comes from different places. Sometimes it's a piece of music or being in nature or seeing a film or reading a magazine. I find inspiration everywhere.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.

In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.