Lucian Freud Looks Quotations

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

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 want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.

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.

The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.