You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.

I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.