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 want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.

Light is the most important person in the picture.

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.