When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.