Paul Cezanne

I am a pupil of Pissarro.

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?

My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

I allow no one to touch me.

I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.

Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

I want to die painting.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.

You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.