Edward Hopper Quotes

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.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form, and design. The term "life" as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

I am after ME [his response on the question what he was after, in his sober painting in 1963 'Sun in an empty room'.

Recognition does not mean so much, you never get it when you need it.

The only real influence I have had was myself.

I could just go a few steps [from the house where he stayed in Paris in 1906- 1907] and I'd see the Louvre across the river. From the corner of the Rue de Bac and Lille (sic) you could see Sacré-Coeur. It hung like a great vision in the air above the city.

I wish I could paint more.. .I do dozens of sketches for oils.. ..if I do one that interests me I go on to make a painting but that happens only two or three times a year.

The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.

The man's the work. Something does not come out of nothing.

The whole answer is there on the canvas.

It takes a long time for an idea to strike.

It is hard for me to know what to paint. It comes slowly.

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.

Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality.