“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.”

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.

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It’s true that fretting never did any good.

People read things into my commercials that don’t even exist.

Average is a failing plan! Average doesn’t work in any area of life. Anything that you give only average amounts of attention to will start to subside and will eventually cease to exist.

If you’re focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it’s actually how a lot of stuff happens.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

A busy, vibrant, goal-oriented woman is so much more attractive than a woman who waits around for a man to validate her existence.

I keep falling, and feeling, and loving too much, but isn’t feeling it all existence.

Love: To feel with one’s whole self the existence of another being.

Validation should never exist anyway. What you are and who you are – those are enough.