I assure you that there's a lot involved in compositions with figures. ... It's like weaving... you must control and keep an eye on several things at once.

But what's your ultimate goal, you'll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.

What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is ... for us humans.

I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.