77 Quotes by Lucian Freud

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.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

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.

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.

A painter’s tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.

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.

I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help – to look at situations within painting, rather than paintings.

When I’m painting people in clothes I’m always thinking very much of naked people, or animals dressed.

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.