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

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 is only too easy to catch people’s attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.

Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.

I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.

Everything changes, even stone.

Light is the most important person in the picture.

Obedience to the will of God is the pathway to perpetual honor and everlasting joy.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

I’m a guy who doesn’t like to be alone, and the joy that my friends pass me, with them being always by my side, is gigantic.

Where our joy is, there should our work be.

The myriad things are complete in us. There is no greater joy than to reflect on ourselves and become sincere.

A teacher says “I am sowing the seeds of revolution.” At that time we cannot imagine how powerful the teacher is, but he certainly derives joy by fulfilling his duty.

If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.