We are in a period of searchers rather than of creators.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

If you can live while doing what you love, then you are already a success.

Anybody who is imitating somebody else, no matter who it us, is heading in the wrong direction. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.

While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.

Sweet girl, if I told you everything, life would lose all mystery.

I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the prerogative to lie whenever I want.

Good words will not give me back my children.

It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.

His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.