Accidents, try to change them -- it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

Arts and Artists

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Critics and Criticism

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Ideas

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Individuality

My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. --Pablo Picasso Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

Progress

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

Sympathy

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

Things and Little Things

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

Youth

Youth has no age.