Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

If I think, I am lost.

One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it.

You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.