I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer’s fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.
At times it is not easy for me to take up living again.
Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone, except to ask for diner or coffee. And it has been like that form the beginning.
I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.
You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream.
In spite of everything, I shall rise again.
The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.
The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.
Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.
What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.
A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved.
Yellow is capable of charming God.
The sunflower is mine, in a way.
It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.
It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn’t easy to paint oneself either.
The laws of color are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.
Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.
I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.