“Oh, yes, I was a great retoucher. A retoucher is an esthetic surgeon !”

I paint what cannot be photographed, something from the imagination. I photograph the things I don’t want to paint, things that are already in existence.

If I’d had the nerve, I’d have become a thief or a gangster, but since I didn’t, I became a photographer.

The tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow.

Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

I am not going to be dictated to by the size of the camera. I use everything from an 8 x 10 to a 35-mm. But I don’t use these modern cameras which break down all the time !

l photograph what l do not wish to paint and l paint that which l cannot photograph.

To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.

An original is a creation motivated by desire.

I paint when I cannot photograph.

I have never painted a recent picture.

I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.

To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.

The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.

I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.

It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you’ve fallen into good hands – someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

I met the surgeon general – he offered me a cigarette.

You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn’t let him cut my nails.

Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general’s warning.

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you.