When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.