“Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

A good impression is lost so quickly.

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It’s true that fretting never did any good.

I’m in a foul mood as I’m making stupid mistakes… This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away… what a rage I was in!

I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.

I can only draw what I see.

Like wildflowers you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.

I always wanted the flowiness that hip-hop artists had. I always admired how they rapped so fast, but I never wanted to rap; I wanted to sing the rap.

Hang in there darling. The rain is necessary for the flower to fully grow.

To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through loving kindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.

Like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty.

I’ll bring you flowers in the pouring rain.

You deflowered me. Still I blossomed.

Despite knowing they won’t be here for long they still choose to live their brightest lives- sunflowers.