“I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.”

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.

Pictures aren’t made out of doctrines. Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red…But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections.

I must have flowers, always, and always.

I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint.

Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

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

When you are not happy with your life, always think that someone is happy simply because you exist.

You are a nameless prayer, my heart begs to be brought again to existence.

Let the weight fall all there is to do is be here at all.

Freedom exists only with power.

Her existence made me feel drunk even when I was sober.

I believe what it says in the scriptures and in the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Never was there a time when you did not exist, and there never will be a time when you cease to exist.’

Wise thinkers prevail everywhere.

I thought you were supposed to be pretending I don’t exist, not irritating me to death.