The Pointing Figure and the Crystal Column, Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights - Poster

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“Art is born of constraints, lives of struggles, and dies of freedom.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”