Walter Keane

"Well, I first, uh, started doing this after World War II when I was kind of tramping around France, Germany, and the lowlands, and I came upon these frightened, waif-type children, and, uh, they actually looked like rats running around and they acted like it. And, uh, I started painting this type of thing of these chi—these children, they didn't even seem to know why—these children didn't even seem to know how to talk; they couldn't even pray. And it started like, uh, an artist work—it-it does—you don't know how to talk about it, but the painting can talk for you, and I think this is the difference between an artist and a poet and a writer: in other words, an artist, uh, paints what he has to say, where other people do it in, uh, in more verbal type of…"

"Let's face it, nobody could paint eyes like El Greco, and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane."

"We don't criticize them, so why criticize Walter Keane just because his symbol of humanity is a child?"

"My psyche was scarred in my art student days in Europe, just after World War II, by an ineradicable memory of war-wracked innocents. In their eyes lurk all of mankind's questions and answers. If mankind would look deep into the soul of the very young, he wouldn't need a road map. I wanted other people to know about those eyes, too. I want my paintings to clobber you in the heart and make you yell, "!""

"I don't really care what people think of me. Whatever anyone may say, I've helped the whole art world, just as Picasso and Dalí have. I've made people aware of painting, which makes them buy more, just like they go buy more records and books once they're exposed."

"It takes dispassionate bravado to speak of oneself in the third person. Walter has such bravado: it is one of the chief reasons for his success."

"It was the eyes that did it. [timid giggle] I liked the way he painted eyes and he liked mine."

"He can't paint eyes. He couldn't learn to paint at all."

"But it was a real nightmare when Walter threatened to kill me and our two daughters if we told anyone."

"He'd threatened me so many times. I thought he was so crazy he could hire a hit man to come get me anytime."

"Walter was extremely charming. He could charm anybody, especially women."

"I lost all respect for him and myself, and lived in a nightmare."