“If the affairs of the world were put in the hands of the screwball artists, it couldn’t be in a worse state than it is now !”

A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.

I would photograph an idea rather than an object, a dream rather than an idea.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

I am an economic person; I judge the amount of work involved with the amount of worth attained.

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.

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.

In the UK cycling was very popular until the end of the 1950’s but it really lost out to our love affair with the car.

Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors

Too many expedients may spoil an affair.

To separate man and woman at school, at work, at meetings, in short, to separate them at life, is the affair of perverted and fusty minds! Where there is separation, there is excessive primitiveness!

Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.

The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.

Men have always looked before and after, and rebelled against the existing order. But for their divine discontent, men would not have been men, and there would have been no progress in human affairs.

Gold gives to the ugliest thing a certain charming air, For that without it were else a miserable affair.