“My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.”

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.

I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.

Everything changes, even stone.

Light is the most important person in the picture.

I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks.

I still don’t know where I am going to sleep tomorrow.

When I look at nature I feel as if I’ll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you’re working.

Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

The real subject of every painting is light.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at any moment.

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

He says he wants to take me to Paris – but I see Amsterdam in his eyes.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that’s in my mind.

All that destiny in those wild eyes, and so much passion in that wild heart.

My mother says I didn’t open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

I always make sure my lashes look cute.

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.