I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

My garden is a slow work, pursued with love and I do not deny that I am proud of it. Forty years ago, when I established myself here, there was nothing but a farmhouse and a poor orchard...I bought the house and little by little I enlarged and organized it...I dug, planted weeded, myself; in the evenings the children watered.

Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.

the more I live, the more I regret how little i know