“Light is the most important person in the picture.”

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I’m exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I’ve set out to do.

No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.

I’m knocked out, I’ve never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I’m quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy.

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.

I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.

It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.

The more I live, the more I regret how little i know.

One’s better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one’s own. In fact it’s a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

If only the weather would improve, there’d be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Life is a winking light in the darkness.

If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.

The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come.

None of us shines with our own light: the light that we have is a reflection of the grace of God, of the light of God.

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.