“An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.”

“One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.”

“Who wants to do good in this world must deny oneself. A man does not live on this Earth to be happy or to be honest only - he has to do great things for humanity, achieve the generosity of the spirit and rise above the banality where most of the people are drowning and wasting their days.”

“An artist does not have to think about what he is doing.”

“An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.”

“He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.”

“As he went about to the other workrooms he realised that every painting was a self-portrait even when it was a still life or a scene over the roofs of Paris; for no man ever pictured anything but himself, his core, the things that he was basically. With every brush stroke the artist was mercilessly exposed: he could not conceal nothing, he could pretend to be another person, to believe in other values, but in the end he would fool no one.”