Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.

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.

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.

The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.

My curves are not crazy.

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.