Collage is a supersensitive and scrupulously accurate instrument, similar to a seismograph, which is able to record the exact amount of the possibility of human happiness at any period.

Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.

Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.

Painting is neither decorative amusement, nor the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

All good ideas arrive by chance.

Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

I have never seen a beautiful painting of a beautiful woman. But you can take an ugly woman and make a beautiful painting of her. It is the painting itself that should be beautiful.

Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back.

The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him.

Reading is my breath.

It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.

Everything in life in nonsense. it's just a question of persepctive

Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.

I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don't know why. Maybe they're afraid of what I might say. There's probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don't know what it is.

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.