“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”

It takes a long time to become young.

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That’s the only way he will do original work.

Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up.

I have never made radically different experiments. Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should.

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

While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas.

Lord, protect me from what I want!

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

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.

Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.

People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

Don’t waste your youth growing up.

There’s nothing more difficult than a line.

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

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

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

Please read my diary, look through my things and figure me out.

If you read, you’ll judge.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.

The reason for my starting a diary is that I have no real friend.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me.

I always say, keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.