It takes a long time to become young.

Pablo Picasso is widely credited with the remark in interviews and anecdotal recollections from his later years, when he was reflecting on aging, artistic freedom, and the hard-won ability to work with the spontaneity of a child. The saying circulates especially in art-world commentary about modernism’s break with academic convention: Picasso’s career is often framed as a long struggle to unlearn inherited rules in order to recover directness, play, and bold simplification. While the line is frequently quoted as Picasso’s, it is typically presented without a precise date or a clearly traceable first publication in the sources most commonly cited in quotation collections.

The saying reverses the usual idea that youth precedes age: for Picasso, “becoming young” is an achievement, not a starting condition. Youth here means creative freedom—openness, audacity, and the willingness to look foolish while learning. Time and experience can harden into habit; to recover youthfulness is to unlearn convention and regain curiosity. The quote also hints at an ethical stance toward art: technical competence and reputation are not endpoints, because genuine vitality requires continual reinvention. In that sense, “young” names a disciplined practice of renewal rather than mere biological age.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
It takes a long time to become young.