A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

Art is an escape from reality.

Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.