Marc Chagall Quotes - Page 2

Mozart never composed anything, ever! He copied what was written on his soul.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.

My hands were too soft.. I had to find some special occupation, some kind of work that would not force me to turn away from the sky and the stars, that would allow me to discover the meaning of life.

The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.

Work isn't to make money; you work to justify life.

Love and fantasy, go hand in hand.

What I mean by 'abstract' is something which comes to life spontaneously through a gamut of contrasts, plastic at the same time as psychic, and pervades both the picture and the eye of the spectator with conceptions of new and unfamiliar elements.

What a genius, that Picasso. It is a pity he doesn't paint.

We all know that a good person can be a bad artist.But no one will ever be a genuine artist unless he is a great human being and thus also a good one.

If I weren't a Jew then I wouldn't be an artist, or at least not the one I am now.

To call everything that appears illogical, fantasy, fairy tale, or chimera would be practically to admit not understanding nature.

I've always painted pictures in which human love floods my colors.

On cannot be precise, and still be true.

You cannot explain me with "isms." They are very bad for an artist. What one must believe in is color.

Art seems to me to be above all a state of soul. All souls are sacred, the soul of all the bipeds in every quarter of the globe.

Can my words distill for you a little sweetness, tender and caressing?

In my youth, poverty enriched me, but now I can afford wealth.

Changes in societal structure and in art would possess more credibility if they had their origins in the soul and spirit. If people read the words of the prophets with closer attention, they would find the keys to life.

Mine alone is the country of my soul.

If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste.

Color is everything. When color is right, form is right.

I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.

Art is foremost a state of mind, and only secondarily a problem of form.

I am working in Paris . I cannot for a single day get the thought out of my head that there probably exists something essential, some immutable reality, and now that I have lost everything else (thank God, it gets lost all on its own) I am trying to preserve this and, what is more, not to be content. In a word: I am working.

I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love. I will give all my soul to prove this once more.