Edward Hopper: "More of me comes out when I improvise"

• "What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house".

• "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".

• "I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions".

• "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".

• "I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums".

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

• "I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking".

• "I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it".

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

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

• "If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression".

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

• "In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period".

• "It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method".

• "Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house".

• "More of me comes out when I improvise".

• "No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination".

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

• "The only real influence I've ever had was myself".

• "The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable".

• "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".

• "There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house".

• "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".

• "Well, I have a very simple method of painting".

• "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".

• "Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world".

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

• "Quello che vorrei dipingere è la luce del sole sulla parete di una casa".

• "Il mio scopo nel dipingere è sempre stata la più esatta trascrizione possibile della più intima impressione della natura".

• "Se potessi esprimerlo con le parole non ci sarebbe nessuna ragione per dipingerlo".

• "Non dipingo quello che vedo, ma quello che provo".

• "L'arte americana non deve essere americana, deve essere universale. Non deve dare importanza ai propri caratteri nazionali, locali o regionali. Tanto non si può comunque prescindere da quei caratteri. Basta essere se stessi per mostrare necessariamente la razza e la cultura a cui si appartiene, con tutte le proprie caratteristiche".

• "La gente trova qualcosa nel tuo lavoro, la traduce in parole e poi va avanti per sempre. Del resto, perché non dovrebbe esserci nostalgia nell'arte?"

• "L'opera è l'uomo. Una cosa non spunta dal nulla".

• "Per me l'impressionismo era l'impressione immediata. Ma sono più interessato al volume, naturalmente".