I’m enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.
I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.
Everything changes, even stone.
When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think any more.
I had so much fire in me and so many plans...
My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious.
I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.
I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint...
All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.
Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.
I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It’s true that fretting never did any good.
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.
I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.
My heart is forever in Giverny.
When I work I forget all the rest.
Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.