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

Categorized in : Years Beautiful Law

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.

M. C. Escher

impossible art thinking

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

M. C. Escher

ceilings reality art

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

jigsaw-puzzles education art

Order is repetition of units.

M. C. Escher

repetition chaos order

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

M. C. Escher

education math book

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

M. C. Escher

eye lying hands

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

artist believe ideas

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

fun beautiful two

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

M. C. Escher

inspirational life order

My work is a game, a very serious game.

M. C. Escher

games work art

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

space stars trying

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

example fun two

Wonder is the salt of the earth.

M. C. Escher

salt earth wonder

Originality is merely an illusion.

M. C. Escher

illusion originality

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

M. C. Escher

artist beautiful life

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

M. C. Escher

drug-use alcohol dream

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

spiritual discovery lying

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

M. C. Escher

discovery life knowledge

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

M. C. Escher

teaching math art

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

trying beautiful world