Lucian Freud

Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.

I want paint to work as flesh.

And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.

The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.

I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.

As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

Whether it will convince or not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to be seen.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.

A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.