What I am after, above all, is expression.

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

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.

If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must...intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.

The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the retina, but one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour. Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is given them.

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

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