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Creativity Quote by Pablo Picasso

"The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face"

About this Quote

Aging, in Picasso's telling, isn't a gentle accumulation of wisdom; it's weather that turns hostile. The line works because it refuses nostalgia and refuses heroism. "Wind" is a perfect metaphor for the pressures you can't bargain with: time, fatigue, regret, illness, the narrowing runway of possibility. It's invisible, constant, and it only becomes legible through resistance. You don't see wind; you feel it pushing back against your forward motion.

The second clause is the knife twist: "and it's always in your face". Not at your back, not as a bracing challenge you can harness, but as a force that interrupts, dries you out, makes you squint. Picasso frames later life as a confrontation, not a descent. Subtextually, it's also about attention. The world doesn't politely step aside for your biography; it blows straight at you, forcing you to adjust your posture, your pace, your expectations. That bluntness fits an artist who spent a lifetime remaking form and refusing to settle into a single style.

Context matters: Picasso lived long enough to become an institution and a target. Fame adds its own headwind - critics, mythmaking, moral scrutiny, the exhaustion of being "Picasso" rather than simply working. The quote reads like a studio truth from someone who never stopped producing: creation as forward movement against increasing drag. It's not self-pity. It's a diagnosis of friction, and a backhanded definition of vitality: if you still feel the wind, you're still walking into it.

Quote Details

TopicAging
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Picasso, Pablo. (2026, January 15). The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-older-you-get-the-stronger-the-wind-gets--34303/

Chicago Style
Picasso, Pablo. "The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-older-you-get-the-stronger-the-wind-gets--34303/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-older-you-get-the-stronger-the-wind-gets--34303/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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The Older You Get the Stronger the Wind - Picasso
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About the Author

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was a Artist from Spain.

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