A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.