He Corot was always surrounded by a crowd of fools and I didn't want to get caught up in it. I admired him from a distance. - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

What wonderful things [Renoir is reacting on Corot's painting 'Interior of Chartres Cathedral' and Delacroix's 'Interior of M. de Mornay’s house', – he saw in 1919 from his wheelchair, in the reopened painting-rooms of the Louvre]. There isn’t a single big picture worth any more than these two little ones.. .The Director [of the Louvre] was so charming to me. I wish I could have thanked him properly. If you meet him, tell him how much I enjoyed my visit. If I'd presented myself at the Louvre in my wheelchair thirty years ago, they'd have shot me out fast enough! You see, one has to live a long time to see such changes. I've been one of the lucky ones. [December 1919, Renoir died]

I am still going through an experimental stage. I'm not happy, and I keep scrubbing out and scrubbing out again. I hope this mania will pass.. .I'm like the children at school; the clean page has to be filled with good writing, and splash – a mess! I'm still making messes and I'm forty years old.

Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.