Pablo Picasso Quotes - Page 14

The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves.

Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.

You're either a goddess ... or a doormat.

Basically the French are all peasants.

You know, it's just like being a peddler. You want two breasts? Well, here you are -- two breasts. We must see to it that the man looking at the picture has at hand everything he needs to paint a nude. If you really give him everything he needs -- and the best -- he'll put everything where it belongs, with his own eyes. Each person will make for himself the kind of nude he wants, with the nude that I will have made for him.

The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.

Art is a lie that makes us realise truth ... that is given us to understand.

When I am told I am too old to do something, I try to do it right away.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.

People are always asking me to sign my old canvases. It's ridiculous!

When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

If it's good, it's mine. If it's bad, it's a fake.

I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!

Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.

I never calculate. That is why those who do, calculate so much less accurately than I.

We didn't want to sign the painting itself, that would have interfered with the composition. And even later, for that reason or for another, I sometimes marked my canvases on the back. If you don't see my signature and the date, madam, it's because the frame is hiding it.

There's no such thing as a bad Picasso, but some are less good than others.

I draw like other people bite their nails.

What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

If I were to sign it now, I'd be committing forgery. I'd be putting my 1943 signature on a canvas painted in 1922.

[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am

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.

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 . . .

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.