“The world doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand the world, that’s why I’ve withdrawn from it.”

Here, on the river’s verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

Don’t be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools… I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.

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.