I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradation…

- Max Beckmann

Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome.

- Max Beckmann

My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entranc…

- Max Beckmann

I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.

- Max Beckmann

All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.

- Max Beckmann

What matters is real love for things of the world outside us and for the deep secrets within us.

- Max Beckmann

The stronger and more intense my desire becomes to capture and record that which is unsayable, the more tightly my mouth stays shut.

- Max Beckmann

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.

- Max Beckmann

The important thing is first of all to have a real love for the visible world that lies outside ourselves as well as to know the deep secret of what …

- Max Beckmann