- David Sylvester: The point is that his work touches a nerve. People still feel that it is making a powerful statement in regard to the human situation, and the question is whether it is an inflated and willful statement or a direct and acute one. What is certain is that Bacon is a very direct and acute man. He is a man of remarkable independence of spirit and energy and ruthlessness, especially ruthlessness with himself.
- Francis Bacon: Well you see a rose, this beautiful rose, that in a day or two is dying, its head is falling over and its withered. So is there a great deal of difference between a rose and my subject matter really? It's just a difference, it's only a difference of subject matter. I don't know why they always think that I take such horrifying subjects. I don't think there's anything horrifying about my subjects.
- Francis Bacon: I may bring in very strongly this quality of mortality. Because the more violently, more strongly you feel about life, the more strongly you must be aware of death.
- Francis Bacon: I believe for me I much prefer Picasso because he has the brutality of fact, compared to Matisse. But after all, if one uses the word brutality, I mean in one sense, life in it's raw is an extremely brutal thing and Picasso is able very often to bring over the rawness of life at a very acute point, when I talk about the brutality of fact in Picasso, Picasso in a curious way was able to put it across more directly and with less expressionism in it. It seemed to be the fact itself without the will to express it.