Degas Quotes

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

"A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything."

"A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people."

"A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy."

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

"Art is really a battle."

"'Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means."

"Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it."

"Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body."

"Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature."

"Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?"

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

"I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life."

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

"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."

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

"Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement."

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

"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."

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

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

"People call me the painter of dancers, but I really wish to capture movement itself."

"The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe."

"The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them."

"Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs."

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

"What a horrible thing yellow is."

"Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry."

References:

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/edgar-degas/degas-quotes.htm
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edgar_degas.html
http://www.qotd.org/