M.C. Escher Quotes & Sayings

Only those who attempt the absurd ... will achieve the impossible. I think ... I think it's in my basement ... Let me go upstairs and check. — M.C. Escher

Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us
order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals
have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems. — M.C. Escher

I could fill an entire second life with working on my prints. — M.C. Escher

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists. — M.C. Escher

I might be in the basement. I'll go upstairs and check. — M.C. Escher

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

I can't keep from fooling around with our irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up two and three dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity. — M.C. Escher

To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am. — M.C. Escher

Order is repetition of units.
Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm. — M.C. Escher

The regular division of the plane into congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is one of these hobbies or problems ... I have embarked on this geometric problem again and again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occurred to me; one might say that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why. — M.C. Escher

There is something breathtaking about the basic laws of crystals. They are in no sense a discovery of the human mind; they just "are" - they exist quite independently of us. The most that man can do is become aware, in a moment of clarity, that they are there, and take cognizance of them. — M.C. Escher

For me it remains an open question whether [this work] pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art. — M.C. Escher

In mathematical quarters, the regular division of the plane has been considered theoretically ... [Mathematicians] have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it. — M.C. Escher

Hands, are the most honest part of the human body, they cannot lie as laughing eyes and the mouth can. — M.C. Escher

Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains. — M.C. Escher

We adore chaos because we love to produce order. — M.C. Escher

My work is a game, a very serious game. — 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

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

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough. — M.C. Escher

I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity. — M.C. Escher

Drawing is deception. — M.C. Escher

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

I came to the ... open gate of mathematics. From here, well-trodden paths lead in every direction, and since then I have often spent time there. Sometimes I think ... I have trodden all the paths ... and then I suddenly discover a new path and experience fresh delights. — M.C. Escher

It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light. I do not see why we should recognize a house, a tree, or a flower here below and not, for example, the red Arcturus up there in the heavens as it hangs from its constellation Bootes, like a basket hanging from a balloon. — M.C. Escher

A woman once rang me up and said, 'Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print -Reptiles- you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madam, if that's the way you see it, so be it.' — 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

Simplicity and order are, if not the principal, then certainly the most important guidelines for human beings in general. — M.C. Escher

What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness. — M.C. Escher

Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? — M.C. Escher

Originality is merely an illusion. — M.C. Escher

All my works are games, serious game. — M.C. Escher

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by 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'? If only I knew! — M.C. Escher

I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. — M.C. Escher

I am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term artist rather embarrassing. — M.C. Escher

I think I have never yet done any work with the aim of symbolizing a particular idea, but the fact that a symbol is sometimes discovered or remarked upon is valuable for me because it makes it easier to accept the inexplicable nature of my hobbies, which constantly preoccupy me. — M.C. Escher

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. — M.C. Escher

Wonder is the salt of the earth. — M.C. Escher

It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. — M.C. Escher

There is something in such laws that takes the breath away. They are not discoveries or inventions of the human mind, but exist independently of us. In a moment of clarity, one can at most discover that they are there and take them into account. Long before there were people on the earth, crystals were already growing in the earth's crust. On one day or another, a human being first came across such a sparkling morsel of regularity lying on the ground or hit one with his stone tool and it broke off and fell at his feet, and he picked it up and regarded it in his open hand, and he was amazed. — 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