Edward Hopper

“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...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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...”

“I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.”

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

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

“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...”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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 s...”