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

Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour

Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.

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

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.

Simple colours can affect the intimate feelings with all the more force because they are simple.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue