Balthus Quotes

#1. Of the autistically interior, dreaming, reading, erotic, self-sufficient child in Balthus' painting we have practically no image at all. Balthus' children are not being driven to succeed where their parents failed, or to be popular, adjusted, or a somebody.

Guy Davenport

#2. The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.

Balthus

#3. Anyway, for whatever interest is to be derived therefrom. Bacon, Balthus, and Magritte are my three favourite painters, along with Dubuffet, of the whole post-impressionist period, by which I mean that before them Bonnard, Vuillard, & Seurat are my favourite painters of that time.

Edward Gorey

#4. Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

Balthus

#5. I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.

Balthus

#6. The secret to keeping winning streaks going is to maximize the victories while at the same time minimizing the defeats.

John Lowenstein

#7. I've heard so many stories of young girls watching the Olympics and being inspired by it, and they want to do it now, and that's really cool.

Allyson Felix

#8. Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

Balthus

#9. I'll tell you what, it doesn't get more beautiful than the west of Ireland. Connemara and County Derry are quite stunning, really.

Matthew Goode

#10. If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of ... kitsch.

Balthus

#11. Am I the greatest? I don't know. I'm the greatest that I can be.

Serena Williams

#12. I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

Balthus

#13. I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

Balthus

#14. Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Balthus

#15. The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Balthus

#16. The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.

Ad Reinhardt

#17. I feel more comfortable when I'm lighter - I sleep better, I snore less, I have more endurance when I work out, my arms look better.

Tyra Banks

#18. One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Balthus

#19. Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!

L. Ron Hubbard

#20. With the tiger you're always on edge, and you always have to keep your distance. The monkey is far less threatening so you're more relaxed around the monkey, and I think that's actually hazardous.

Ed Helms

#21. We need, in a special way, to work twice as hard to help people understand that the animals are fellow creatures, that we must protect them and love them as we love ourselves.

Cesar Chavez

#22. Photography has become an outstanding and indispensable means of propaganda in the revolutionary struggle.

Willi Munzenberg

#23. I do miss competing, being out there - the atmosphere, I do miss it.

Pedro Martinez

#24. I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

Balthus

#25. For did it not mean I was losing my darling, just when I had secretly made her mine?

Vladimir Nabokov

#26. Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

Balthus

#27. I will devote my body and soul to the service of the people and the nation.

Norodom Sihamoni