M. C. Escher quotes

M. C. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist, famous for his mathematically inspired artworks featuring impossible constructions and optical illusions. His intricate designs have fascinated viewers and influenced art, architecture, and mathematics alike. He is celebrated for seamlessly blending art and mathematics into visually captivating masterpieces. Here are 40 of his quotes:

The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure.

M. C. Escher

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

M. C. Escher

Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?

M. C. Escher

He who wonders discovers that this is in itself a wonder.

M. C. Escher

So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen.

M. C. Escher

lf l am not mistaken, the words "art" and "artist" did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors, and painters, practicing a trade.

M. C. Escher

I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now.

M. C. Escher

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed about the concept of "art]. What one person considers to be "art" is often not "art" to another. "Beautiful" and "ugly" are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only "kitsch" is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is "kitsch?"

M. C. Escher

I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days.

M. C. Escher

I am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term "artist" rather embarrassing.

M. C. Escher

I could fill an entire second life with working on my prints.

M. C. Escher

At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.

M. C. Escher

I believe that producing pictures, as I do, is almost solely a question of wanting so very much to do it well.

M. C. Escher

As long as there have been men.... upon this globe.... we have held firmly to the notion of.... all of which must continue to be everlasting in time and infinite in space.

M. C. Escher

.. and to think now that great mathematicians find my work interesting because I am able to illustrate their theories. They can not imagine that I was such a bad pupil in mathematics. I don't understand it myself neither. I never could understand why it was necessary to prove something that everyone already sees. I saw it, I knew it, so it is how it is... But yes, you had to prove it. I did overcome it when I realized I can make something else - I thought I was a good-for-nothing. In my family there were no other artists to find... I was just a weird duck, right?

M. C. Escher

In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to.

M. C. Escher

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

M. C. Escher

My work has nothing to do with people, nothing to do with psychology. I am much more cerebral than Willink. I do not wish to be deep at all. I know that I don't hide anything at all in this work. When Carel Willink paints a naked lady in a street, I think: what is that lady doing there?... the house facades give me a lugubrious impression. So it is a lugubrious street. My work is not lugubrious. If you ask Willink: 'Why are those naked mistresses there', you do not receive an answer. With me you always get an answer when you ask: why..

M. C. Escher

But to get back to the point: did you ever imagine that your dad, who lives so far away from the bustle and intrigue of the world, working on his prints day after day like a hermit, would some day be drawn into the sickening scene of vain officialdom, despite himself?... But what on earth can I do about it? Luckily I can swear by God and all his angels that I never moved a finger to get the decoration or licked the boots of any bigwigs.

M. C. Escher

When someone forgets himself, this by no means makes him altruistic; when a thinking person forgets himself, he immediately also forgets his fellowman, he loses himself and his humanity by becoming engrossed in his subject. Thus he is in a sense more contemplative than a feeling person.

M. C. Escher

After the first proof [of 'Sphere Spirals'] my high expectations were, as always, greatly disappointed. I am now struggling on - with some feeling of despair - so that I at least achieve a passable result.

M. C. Escher

As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.

M. C. Escher