Edward Hopper Quotes

It is a woman looking out to see if the weather is good enough to hang out her wash.

The only real influence I have had was myself.

The whole answer is there on the canvas.

The killing of the horses [a bullfight in Madrid, he visited in June 1910] by the bull is very horrible, much more so as they have no chance to escape and are ridden up to the bull to be butchered.. ..the entry of the bull into the ring however is very beautiful; his surprise and the first charges he makes are very pretty.

I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.

Ninety percent of them [artists in general] are forgotten ten minutes after they’re dead.

So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.

The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.

The people here in fact seem to live in the streets, which are alive from morning until night, not as they are in New York with that never-ending determination for the 'long-green', but with a pleasure-loving crowd that doesn’t care what it does or where it goes, so that it has a good time.

Partly through choice, I was never willing to hire out more than three days a week [making illustrations for the magazines to support himself, c. 1912] I kept some time to do my own work. Illustrating was a depressing experience. And I didn't get very good prices because I didn't often do what they wanted.

I was always interested in architecture, but the editors [of the magazines who demanded these subjects for the illustrations of Hopper] wanted people waving with their arms.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling.

It's probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' and let himself loose.. .Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part.. ..perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts.. ..the parade of the queens of the halls [Paris’ markets] is also one of the events.. ..Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastly white in the sunlight.