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

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

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

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.

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.