I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it.

It is certain that at certain times talent entirely overcomes thought or poetry.

A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.

An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture is finished.

I don't dig beneath the surface for things that don't appear before my own eyes.

Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents.

Mine is the horny hand of toil.