Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

The artist's morality lies in the force and truth of his description.

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor.

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life.

Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work.