Edgar Degas

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

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

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

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. 

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

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. 

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

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

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

I should like to be famous and unknown.