It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation—of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things—the thought of God comes into one's mind.

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.

Do not become the slave of your model.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

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