“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 is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.

I can only draw what I see.

Pictures aren’t made out of doctrines. Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red…But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections.

I must have flowers, always, and always.

I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint.

Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.

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.

Think positive girl, or the world ends.

Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.

Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.

I had that. I could almost feel the miles between us shrinking, as if we were at two ends of some invisible elastic thread.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.