Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

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

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

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.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

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