The only thing to do is to go one's own way, to try one's best, to make the thing live.

... life is too short to do the whole.

What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.

To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.

There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.

Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.