The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.

I have placed there a little door opening on to the mysterious. I have made stories.

The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.

What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art.

The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.

I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.

It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born.