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

That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.

The human face is as strange to me as a countenance, which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways.

Art is the residue of vision.

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.

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

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.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.

The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.

Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.

Fascism itself can only be turned away if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation.

The intensity of a fire, or a heavy concentration, to be a leader, you have to be able to concentrate on that fire and move just as soon as it stops or the last round hits.

Short term intensity cannot replace long term commitment.

Life is not just the passing of time. Life is the collection of experiences and their intensity.