“In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.”

Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.

Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.

When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it.

I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.

I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.

Taste for things of the past evolves, doesn’t it? What was a masterpiece a hundred years ago is no longer so today.

The one thing that fills me with enthusiasm is to try, despite everything, to get nearer to those visions that seem so hard to express.

If only someone else could paint what I see, it would be marvellous, because then I wouldnt have to paint at all.

I see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary. So long as I’ve learned something about why.

The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.

At first, one sees the person who is modelling; but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model.

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.

All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life.

I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.

He could tell she was a little risky but he often enjoyed the taste of danger.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

If you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

And once you’re unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you’re unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary.

Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.