Exactitude is not truth.

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.

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

Work cures everything.

To arrive is to be in prison.

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.