That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. … - Paul Cézanne

..But there is better. Simplicity, being direct. Everything else is just a game, just building castles in the sky.. .Basically I don't think of anything when I paint. I see colours. I strive with joy to convey them on to my canvas just as I see them. They arrange themselves as they choose, any old way. Sometimes that makes a picture. I'm brainless animal. Very content if I could be just that..

Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.. ..not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man.. .The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels.

Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae.. .Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors.