Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation. — Claude Monet

My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions. — Claude Monet

I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance. — Claude Monet

When I work I forget all the rest. — Claude Monet

Perhaps it’s true that I’m very hard on myself, but that’s better than exhibiting mediocre work… too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with. — Claude Monet

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather. — Claude Monet

Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax. — Claude Monet

I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light. — Claude Monet

Think of me getting up before 6, I’m at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening, standing up all the time, nine canvases. It’s murderous. — Claude Monet

I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home. — Claude Monet

If only the weather would improve, there’d be hope of some work, but every day brings rain. — Claude Monet

I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again. — Claude Monet

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I’m exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I’ve set out to do. — Claude Monet

The older I become the more I realize of that I have to work very hard to reproduce what I search: the instantaneous. The influence of the atmosphere on the things and the light scattered throughout. — Claude Monet

I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny. — Claude Monet

I’m getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but… I’m increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I’m praying that I’ll have a few more good years left to me. — Claude Monet

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work The character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else. — Claude Monet

I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones. — Claude Monet

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was. — Claude Monet

One’s better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one’s own. In fact it’s a terrible business and the task is a hard one. — Claude Monet

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly. — Claude Monet

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime. — Claude Monet

I would like to paint the way a bird sings. — Claude Monet

I’m in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint. — Claude Monet

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more! — Claude Monet

I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint… — Claude Monet

I never draw except with brush and paint. — Claude Monet

I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful. — Claude Monet

I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no. — Claude Monet

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found–the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible. — Claude Monet

Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all–my head is bursting… — Claude Monet

When I look at nature I feel as if I’ll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you’re working. — Claude Monet

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession. — Claude Monet

I will do water–beautiful, blue water. — Claude Monet

Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It’s wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane. — Claude Monet

The Thames was all gold. God it was beautiful, so fine that I began working a frenzy, following the sun and its reflections on the water. — Claude Monet

I have once more taken up things that can’t be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I’m always tackling that sort of thing! — Claude Monet

I must have flowers, always, and always. — Claude Monet

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. — Claude Monet

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. — Claude Monet

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. — Claude Monet

Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers. — Claude Monet

What could be said about me…a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well. — Claude Monet

The real subject of every painting is light. — Claude Monet

Light is the most important person in the picture. — Claude Monet

Critic asks: ‘And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?’–’The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light. — Claude Monet

One day Boudin said to me, ‘Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.’ I took his advice. — Claude Monet

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute. — Claude Monet

No, I’m not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet. — Claude Monet

By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me. — Claude Monet

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. — Claude Monet

I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one. — Claude Monet

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting. — Claude Monet

I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way. — Claude Monet

Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in . . . Ruskin’s Elements. — Claude Monet

I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture. — Claude Monet

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. — Claude Monet

I’ve spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me. — Claude Monet

I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly. — Claude Monet

I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough. — Claude Monet

I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I’ve done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting. — Claude Monet

I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel. — Claude Monet

I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I’d go crazy. — Claude Monet

No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others. — Claude Monet

While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose. — Claude Monet

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is. — Claude Monet

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition. — Claude Monet

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. — Claude Monet

It seems to me that when I see nature I see it ready–made, completely written–but then, try to do it! — Claude Monet

My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature. — Claude Monet

Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive. — Claude Monet

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects. — Claude Monet

Nature won’t be summoned to order and won’t be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught. — Claude Monet

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws. — Claude Monet