It has always bothered me that I don't paint like everyone else

One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.

Creation begins with vision.

...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.

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.

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.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.