Claude Monet
Quotations

"Everybody discusses [my art] and pretends to understand... when it is simply necessary to love."

 

"Suddenly a veil was torn away...My destiny as a painter opened out to me."

 

"Pictures aren't made of doctrine ."

- Referring to Impressionism's "rules"

 

"I envelope."

 

"I am more and more driven by the need to render that which I feel."

 

"I didn't become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one."

 

"I still don’t know where I am going to sleep tomorrow. "

 

"Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks."

 

"What can be said about a man who is interested in nothing but his painting? It’s a pity if a man can only interest himself in one thing. But I can’t do any thing else. I have only one interest."

 

"The further I go, the sorrier I am about how little I know: it is this that bothers me the most. "

 

"When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more. "