As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination.

I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.

For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure.

Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.