Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

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

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

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.

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

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