“In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.”

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.

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

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.

Any relationship between a building and its users is one of violence, for any use means the intrusion of a human body into a given space, the intrusion of one order into another.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

Build your own gimmick and hype, and that’ll make you a better powerlifter. Not just doin’ it like James does it, cause if you try to fly off the building like superman you’ll be out there in the middle of the street.

When I was working in my first job engineering construction, what I liked the most was working with architects and making buildings that had this creative side coming from the architect and that were making them a big success.

I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.

We have not come to compete with one another. We have come to complete one another.

Concepts differentiate architecture from mere building…A bicycle shed with a concept is architecture; a cathedral without one is just a building.

So that buildings and structures you normally pass without a glance suddenly become arresting, even beautiful? Well, they seem to have that light in Australia nearly all the time.