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.

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.

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

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.

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

What ravaged my mind was the thought.The thought of you.

I like my quiet time. There is a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back.

Pittacus said that half was more than the whole.

I wasn’t sure if I was charmed by his reluctance to share a bed with a girl or insulted that, apparently, I wasn’t hot enough for him to charge the mattress like a bull.

The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us.

Human beings are the only creatures who blush - or who need to.

Perhaps the things that break our hearts are the very things that serve to open them.

It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.