But by fighting the difficulties in which one finds oneself, an inner strength develops from within our heart, which improves in life’s fight.
I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards.
One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.
Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes.
One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.
Art demands constant observation.
I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don’t invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It’s a question of picking out what one wants from nature.
No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves.
Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.
Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.
Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.
Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground – yet that ground is very dark...
To die for the sake of dying – I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom!
To the one party, woman is always heresy and diabolical. To me, the opposite.
Do not think too deeply about these things – gradually they will become clearer to you.
But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap.
Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.
Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.
If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one’s love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger.
I consciously choose the dog’s path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter...