“My will exceeds my talents.”

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.

The Academies of Art are nothing but great painting factories – those with talent are fed in at one end, and they come out as mechanical painting machines.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

It is better to have a good painting with ten holes than ten bad paintings without any holes.

Colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

The camera will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell.

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man’s urge to open his heart.

To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

I don’t imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

Others that are who, more chivalrous, are willing to admit that women have as much right to act, think, and speak as men.

And in the end when the money is gone – will you still stay it was worth it.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.

If you want to be successful, you have to be willing to use every connection you’ve got.

A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.