Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.