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

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.

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

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

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.

As politicians know all too well, even a Government that does not represent the wishes of a people can count on their support once the nation is locked in conflict with an external foe.

Hope is the one positive force to help us persevere during our darkest storms. Jesus gives us hope when He walks beside us through the fiery furnace and helps us rise above adversity.

There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound; of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth.

I didn't see painters doing paintings of glassware and glass shelves or sand dunes and receding snow fences. Why does that interest photographers and not artists?

I have really bad luck with my thumbs. It plagues me, actually. It drives me crazy! Both of them are very oddly shaped.

Negotiations are about controlling things, about being in the driver's seat and make one tiny mistake; you're dead. I made one tiny mistake, I wore women's clothes

Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.

I feel fashion needs me for many, many years more.

We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life.

Perfection can never be attained by work.