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

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one’s own strength makes one modest.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.

All the theories mess you up inside.

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.

If I think, everything is lost.

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot.

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

I’ll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.