“Lots of people will protest that it’s quite unreal and that I’m out of my mind, but that’s just too bad.”

If only the weather would improve, there’d be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

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

It is only too easy to catch people’s attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.

Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.

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.

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

The only difference between a good shot and a bad shot is if it goes in or not.

You kind of never leave Arsenal. How many comebacks do you make? At one point it will turn out to be a bad move. We all love the first Rocky but I’m not too sure about the last one.

I know I’m never as good or bad as one single performance. I’ve never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I’ve always been able to leave the game at the arena.

I enjoy life when things are happening. I don’t care if it’s good things or bad things. That means you’re alive.

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

I don’t think bonuses are always bad.

People who assume I want to run for elected office may be dealing from a bad assumption.