The Portrait

Being by the sea is like a permanent baptism; the light and air hypnotizes, and your soul is washed by vastness.

The painter without the critic is nothing. The good critic can make the mediocre famous, the great obscure. His power is limitless; the artist is his servant, and one day will recognize the fact.

I painted not what I saw but how you wished to be seen.

All you have to do is give people what they want, reflect themselves back into their own eyes, and they will fall over to crush money into your outstretched hand.

You become the weather you live in.

Still, beauty can flourish in even the most inhospitable terrain.

You are far more powerful than that, are you not? You change the way people think, shape the way they see the world.

But innocence is only pleasurable because it is transient.

The walls are bare; look out of the window and you have a finer sight than any painter has ever placed on a piece of canvas.