Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.

l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.

A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.

It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.

You have to first experience what you want to express

So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.

To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life