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

It is better to have done something than to have been someone.

I haven’t many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.

Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think any more.

I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.

I’ve said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.

I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.

What I need most of all is color, always, always.

My heart is forever in Giverny.

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.

I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.

Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.

Perhaps it’s true that I’m very hard on myself, but that’s better than exhibiting mediocre work… too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.

I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.

I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.