Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

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

Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.

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

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.

Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.