My pick is working deep in the soil of this unknown America, turning out gold and opals and precious stones, an altar, a broken statue. And the Muse divines the meaning of the hieroglyphics. The strange life of a vanished people emerges from the mist of time.

Pity for him who one day looks upon his inward sphinx and questions it. He is lost.

Si pequena es la patria, uno grande la suena.

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient; the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing: there is no pain as great as being alive, no burden heavie…

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make somet…

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…

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 va…