Every time I paint, I throw myself into the water in order to learn how to swim.

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.

Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim.

You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

There is no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other.

There is only one true thing: Instantly paint what you see.

Who is this Monet whose name sounds just like mine and who is taking advantage of my notoriety?

Conciseness in art is essential and a refinement. The concise man makes one think; the verbose bores. Always work towards conciseness.

Insults are pouring down on me as thick as hail.

Who holds a power but newly gained is ever stern of mood.

If you don't have the power to change yourself, then nothing will change around you.

"No" is just a moment in time.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

To hell with the Church when it becomes a State and the hell with the State when it becomes a Church.

We hold the view that the people make the best judgment in the long run.

Worship is an attitude expressed

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.

The industry is becoming very ready for animal identification.

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.