“Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!”

Art first of all is optical. That’s where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture…we merge in an iridescent chaos.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

I want to die painting.

Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.