Edward Hopper

“I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.”

“I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.”

“Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.”

“I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.”

“If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.”

“The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.”

“Well, I have a very simple method of painting.”

“After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.”

“The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.”

“I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.”

“What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”

“In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.”

“The only real influence I've ever had is myself.”

“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”

“My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.”

“More of me comes out when I improvise.”

“There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.”

“I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.”

“Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.”

“There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.”