Giorgio de Chirico Quotations

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

I believe, however, that such abnormal moments can be found in everyone, and it is all the more fortunate when they occur in individuals with creative talent or with clairvoyant powers.

Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.

We must hold enormous faith in ourselves.

It is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense of itself, which has no subject, which means absolutely nothing from the logical point of view... should speak so strongly in us... that we feel compelled to paint...

If a work of art is to be truly immortal, it must pass quite beyond the limits of the human world, without any sign of common sense and logic. In this way the work will draw nearer to dream and to the mind of a child.

It used to be that painters were crazy and sculptors clever. Today it's the other way around.

When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.

Everything has two aspects; the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction.

There is much more mystery in the shadow of a man walking on a sunny day, than in all religions of the world.

One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness.