Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.

Work cures everything.

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Exactitude is not truth.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Creativity takes courage.

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

My curves are not crazy.

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

In love, the one who runs away is the winner.

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success.

To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

Precision is not reality.

Purer colors have in themselves independently of the objects they serve to express a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

Color helps to express light not the physical phenomenon but the only light that really exists that in the artists brain.

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

Remember, a line cannot exist alone; it always brings a companion along. Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.

The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.

I did my sculpture as a painter. I did not work as a sculptor.

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.