“And threat'ning France, plac'd like a painted Jove,
Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand.”

“Be proud, Frenchmen! Lift high your heads, Frenchmen! You are no longer anything, and this man is everything! He holds in his hand your intelligence, as a child holds a bird. Any day he pleases, he can strangle the genius of France.”

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.”

“Jove almighty,
nod assent to the daring work I have in hand!”
Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue coeptis.

“I decided that the devil finds work for idle hands and thanked him for his suggestion.”

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”

“You don't like my painting, you only want to help me. If you had given me one franc for my picture I would have taken it [when M. Castaing discovered his art for the very first time and offered him in advance 100 franc to make a new painting - circa 1917 – 1919]”

“every one but an ideot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious:: I do not mean that the poor in England are to be kept like the poor of France; but the state of the country considered, they must be (like all mankind) in poverty, or they will not work.”

“I know I must live in France, but I don't want to cut myself off from America. France is a picture already painted. America still has to be painted. Maybe that's why I feel freer there. But when I work in America, it's like shouting in a forest. There's no echo.”

“He reached for my hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed my fingertips. "I love you.”