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

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.

I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.

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

It's with my brush that I make love.

What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

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

In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.

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