“I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough.”

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.

Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room.

I’m working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.

As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.

My life has been nothing but a failure.

One day Boudin said to me, ‘Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.’ I took his advice.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It’s wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane.

One can do something if one can see and understand it.

Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.

Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of pink and blue: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious, and I hope it will please you.

It’s enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.

I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

A good impression is lost so quickly.

When I work I forget all the rest.

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

While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose.

The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.

I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and the soup can was it.

My dad is Caucasian, and my mom is African American. I’m half black and half white. Being biracial paints a blurred line that is equal parts staggering and illuminating.

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.

Painting transports me into another dimension which, quite literally, refreshes parts of the soul which other activities can’t reach.