Claude Monet — "City life doesn't really suit me."

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."

"Étretat is becoming more and more amazing...it's superb and I rage at my inability to express it all better. You'd need to use both hands and cover hundreds of canvases."

"My wife just had another baby and I am unable to pay for medical care that mother and child must have."

"I am following Nature without being able to grasp her... I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."

"I'm so fed up with these water lilies. I can't stand them anymore."