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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.
- Lucian Freud Quote

Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art.
- Lucian Freud Quote

The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote

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.
- Lucian Freud Quote