Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.

I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.

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

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.