“How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.”

“Everyone has their own personality, its own character, and if he respects that, everything would finally fall over for good only.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“A person may paint or talk about painting but he cannot do both at the same time.”