So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.