“I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.”

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.

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.

Whenever you feel unimportant, unloved, or insecure, remember to who you belong.

I like to know that when I’m 90 years old, I’m going to be able to look at a song or poem I wrote and say, “Wow! I remember I was so crazy about this person,” or “I remember what that day felt like.”

Feelings have the answer for words we don’t know how to speak.

It feels so good to know the insanity of our love is real.

I love fashion – I really feel it’s where I belong.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

When you reach a point of no return with someone and you feel there’s going to be no reconciliation, you have to disconnect. I can’t allow myself to be emotionally connected with people like that again, it’s too damaging.

I go by my instincts. It’s whatever I feel in the scene in the moment.