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

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.

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.