My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

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

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress and what by a dome.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject but to realize sensations.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Writing has laws of perspective of light and shade just as painting does or music. If you are born knowing them fine. If not learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured such as poetry music painting public speaking.