“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’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

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.