"At present there is an extremely exaggerated formation of groups around 'trend'; there are 1. young people following Malevich and 2. young people following me. We both belong to the left-wing artistic movement, although we have different ideas about ends and means. Obviously it would take too long to talk about this problem now.. .But there is one thing I will tell you: Although I was born in Russia - and what is more: in the "settlement territory" – I was trained abroad and am all the more sensitive to everything that is taking place here in the field of art . The memory of the splendour of the original is much to painful for me.."

“Only a child had its place on the cross, and that was enough for me .. ..in the exact sense there was no cross but a blue child in the air. The cross interested me less.”

“My works are dear to me, each in its own way, I shall have to answer for them on the Day off Judgement. God alone knows whether I shall ever see them again. Quite apart from the money which I was going to receive for their sale there and it is no small sum..”

“..In spite of everything, there is still no more wonderful vocation than to continue to tolerate events and to work on in the name of our mission, in the name of that spirit which lives on in our teaching and in our vision of humanity and art, the spirit which can lead us Jews down the true and just path. But along the way, peoples will spill our blood, and that of others.”

“In exasperation, I furiously attacked the floors and walls of the Moscow Theater. My mural paintings sight there, in obscurity. Have you seen them? Rant and rave, my contemporaries! In one way or another, my first theatrical alphabet gave you a belly-ache. Not modest? I'll leave that to my grandmother: it bores me. Despise me, if you like.”

“If Russian painters were condemned to become the pupils of the West they were, I think, rather unfaithful ones by their very nature. The best Russian realist conflicts with the realism of Courbet. The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves on perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pissaro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root. Why my language itself is foreign to them. Why people do not place confidence in me. Why the artistic circles fail to recognize me. Why in Russia I am entirely useless.. .In Paris, it seemed to me that I was discovering everything, above all a mastery of technique.. .It was not in technique alone that I sought the meaning of art then. It was as if the gods had stood before me.. .I had the impression that we are still only roaming on the surface of matter, that we are afraid to plunge into chaos, to shatter and overthrow beneath our feet the familiar surface.”

“When I painted Christ's parents I was thinking of my own parents. The bearded man is the Child's father. He is my father.”