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

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

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

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

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.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.