“My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.”

Don’t be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools… I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.

Art first of all is optical. That’s where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture…we merge in an iridescent chaos.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

I want to die painting.

Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

If our country is serious about reducing our dependency on foreign oil, we need to get serious about mobilizing the infrastructure necessary to distribute and dispense the next generation of fuels.

I have always tried to be obedient regarding important matters like not being scalded to death by burning oil, but when public opinion takes a route far from one’s inner conviction, one cannot value disobedience too highly.

I don’t want to be a leader. I want to be one who goes around with a little oil can and offer help when I see a breakdown.

So when you go up against the Far Right you go up against the big financial special interests like the Halliburtons of the world, the big oil companies, the big energy companies who work so hard to rip us off.

I don’t want to be a great leader; I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown, offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes. The mechanic with the oil can: that is my ideal in life.

Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.

What they [Jim deMint and the oil lobby] do care about is the precedent. If they open up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), they’ll think they can do anything to the environment – anything at all. Drilling in Yosemite? In the Grand Canyon? What’s next?

If he were on fire, he couldn’t act as if he were burning. He can’t out-act me on the big screen.