If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.