When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.

What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

The sight of stars always sets me dreaming just as naively as those black dots on a map set me dreaming of towns and villages. Why should these points of light in the firmament, I wonder, be less accessible than the dark ones on the map of France? We take a train to go to Torascon or Roven and we take death to a star.

What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it.

Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.