Gerhard Richter Quotes

Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing.

In my long experience, one thing I know is that truth is elusive.

I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?

The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are

Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.

Art is not a reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection.

You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.

I never know how much of what I say is true.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.

From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

Politics is not an exact science.

We're always just telling stories, and stories are always just approximations of the truth. It's never the truth exactly.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

No one will ever know the complete truth.

Reality is a sliding door.