EDGAR DEGAS

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

He is the only politician who knows anything about art.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

I would like to be famous but unknown.

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.

The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.