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.

A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.