All inspired painters are impressionists, even though it be true that some impressionists are not inspired.

No, mes amis, impressionism is not charlatanry, nor a formula, nor a school. I should say rather it is the bold resolve to throw all those things overboard.

I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly. Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.

My only ambition was to create an honest picture that would interpret nature as she really is, as she ought to be seen.

Go to nature with no parti pris. You should not know what your picture is to look like until it is done. Just see the picture that is coming.

If ever a painter wrought a miracle of illusion with brush and pigment that painter was Velazquez in his Las Meninas, at the Prado in Madrid.

I do not care to paint portraits indoors. I cannot feel sympathetic.

As far as outdoor work is concerned, a studio is only a garage; a place in which to store pictures and repair them, never a place in which to paint them.

The older I become, the more I realize that drawing is the most important of all the problems of picture-making.

With all its excesses, the modern impressionistic movement has given us one discovery, the color violet. It is the only discovery of importance in the art world since Velazquez.

How long did it take me to delimit this art? Twenty years! ... It was a laborious process, but a methodical and rational one; gradually the hesitations were ironed out, but not all of a sudden.

Your gift is your grace.

The channels of intuitive knowledge are opened according to the intensity of individual need.

I don't meet the competition, I destroy it.

There is always someone there to lend a hand.

Heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken.

I got a piggy bank and the goal was to fill it up.

Asking questions is one of the best ways to grow as a human being.

In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die.

I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.