“I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant.”

My life has been nothing but a failure.

One day Boudin said to me, ‘Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.’ I took his advice.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It’s wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane.

One can do something if one can see and understand it.

Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.

Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of pink and blue: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious, and I hope it will please you.

It’s enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.

I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

A good impression is lost so quickly.

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.

If I’d known how many problems I was going to run into before I finished, I can’t remember a single project I would have started.

The last thing you want to do is finish playing or doing anything and wish you would have worked harder.

I finished a big book the other day. 421 pages. That’s a lot of coloring when you think about it.

While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose.

In soloing – as in other activities – it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.

At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.