“There hasn’t been any art yet. Art is just beginning.”

“My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.”

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”

“I never know what I’m going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I’m just the middleman.”

“The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.”

“All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.”

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

“The best artists know what to leave out.”

“Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.”

“All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

“Pictures must not be too picturesque.”

“The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.”

“That’s why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness.”