Pablo Picasso Quotes
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I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.
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An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.
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Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
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Braque always said that the only thing that counts, in painting, is the intention, and it's true. What counts is what one wants to do, and not what one does. That's what's important.
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Action is the foundation of all success.
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Cubism is not a reality you can take in your hand. It's more like a perfume, in front of you, behind you, to the sides, the scent is everywhere but you don’t quite know where it comes from.
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The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
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Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.
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When you begin a picture you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur.
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Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.
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I have had no true friends, only lovers.
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People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it.
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Lord, protect me from what I want!
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Art is a leap into the dark.
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Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.
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To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing.
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Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).
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The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.
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If it's good, it's mine. If it's bad, it's a fake.
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It's insane how many Roman coins are being found! It's as if all Romans had holes in their pockets. They sowed coins wherever they went. Even in the fields. Maybe to grow money . . .
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What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he's a painter, or ears if he's a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he's a poet, or even, if he's a boxer, just his muscles? On the contrary, he's at the same time a political being, constantly alive to heart-rending, burning, or happy events in the world.
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In one way or another, I always marked my pictures. But there were times when I put my signature on the back of the canvas. All my works from the cubist period, until about 1914, have my name and the date on the back side of the stretcher. I know someone spread the story that in Céret, Braque and I decided not to sign our pictures anymore. But that's just a legend!
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Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty.
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I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.