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

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.

Love would never be a promise of a rose garden unless it is showered with a light of faith, water of sincerity, and an art of passion.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

To dwell is to garden.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Sometimes your heart was meant to break, so these broken pieces of yours can bloom in a garden of self-love.

Honey, not every flower belongs to your garden.

The dark silhouette of a forgotten rose in a forbidden garden of love; what kind of delicate fragrance of forgiveness it seems to tell my heart about.

I asked god, “why do we sin?” God replied, “The roses in the garden smell delightfully, but in your vase, they rot, just like people in conditions that don’t belong to them.”