“There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art.”

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.

With a painter’s temperament, all that’s needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique – all these are in the middle.

Pleasure must be found in study.

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one’s own strength makes one modest.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.

All the theories mess you up inside.

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.

If I think, everything is lost.

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.