A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

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

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

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.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.