"To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."
"You'll understand, I'm sure that I'm chasing the merest sliver of color. It's my own fault. I want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light runs out. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes 3 or 4 minutes at most."
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Source: Claude Monet (1999). “Monet by himself: paintings, drawings, pastels, letters”
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"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
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"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
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"Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows."