“I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.”

Light is the most important person in the picture.

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.

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

The real subject of every painting is light.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at any moment.

My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.

When I work I forget all the rest.

Nature won’t be summoned to order and won’t be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.

I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.

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

I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.

Sometimes a little brain damage can help.

Some have brains, and some haven’t, and there it is.

We must take care of our minds because we cannot benefit from beauty when our brains are missing.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Pictures, propagated by motion along the fibers of the optic nerves in the brain, are the cause of vision.

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.