Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

"I have always been a pencil."

"Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired."

"I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record."

"Le vieux con!"

"I am quite incapable of doing them [making landscapes], even the shadow. My trees look like spinach and my sea like heaven knows what.. ..[the Mediterranean landscape was] the devil to paint, precisely because it is so beautiful."

"I'm very much alone all day, I read a litle but, in the long run, it gives me a headache. I draw and paint as much as I can, indeed till my hand grows tired, and when night begins to fall I hope Jeanne d'Armagnac [his cousin] will come to my bedside. She does sometimes, and cheers me up and plays with me, and I listen to her talk, without daring to look at her. She is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful."

"I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally.. .It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like adorning them with wanton hairs, rounding them off and giving them a bright surface.. . - A painter in embryo.. ..- Write me a line soon. I am feverish with anxiety."

"I could never have believed that such kindness existed: to receive my wretched drawings and then thank me into the bargain. And you need not be so scrupulous about my drawings. Just use those you like.. ..But, I am madly, crazily happy at the thought that your prose [Devismes novel 'Cocotte'], like so many fireworks, will frame my daubs, that you should have offered me a helping hand on the arduous road towards getting known..."

"When my pencil starts moving, it must be allowed its head or - bang! - nothing more happens."

"There are two young Englishmen in the next rooms to ours who are superb; their two sisters, looking like umbrellas, are here too, dressed in pink, with a little friend in blue with red hair. She is a type I have tried to draw on horseback but have not succeeded."

"Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it! [And then probably with a fourth sniff as a break] Eh? What? Isn't that so, my dear chap?"

"I can't do it, I can't do it. I simply can't help turning a deaf ear to it and banging my head against the wall - yes - and all for an art that escapes me and will never know all the trouble I have taken on its behalf."

"Lautrec was still satisfying his rather classical art-teacher Cormon in Paris. The unreal conventions of Cormon imposed and discouraged him, according to Henri Perruchot"

"The Mirlitons in the Place Vendôme, opposite the column! What a crush! A lot of people, a lot of women, and a lot of nonsense! It's a crush made up of gloved hands manipulating tortoiseshell or gold lorgnettes; but it's a crush all the same!"

"In Paris [Summer of 1881].. ..Lautrec found 'with wild joy' his [older] friend Princeteau. The affection linking the sixteen-year-old cripple to the deaf-mute of thirty-seven was stronger than ever. Their respective infirmities served to increase their friendship, They saw each other every day. Lautrec called Princeteau his 'master'; Princeteau called Lautrec his 'studio foster-child.' Indeed, Lautrec imitated him 'like a monkey.' He copied his methods, his brushwork and his technique which had both solidity and fluency and was much concerned with the management of light."

"As far as Lautrec is concerned, I believe the truest reason is that Lautrec thinks of one thing only, that's himself and not the others. So it's probable that these gentlemen will have judged it preferable to do the same, i.e., to manage without him."

"De Lautrec has an excellent portrait of a woman at the piano ['Mademoiselle Dihau at the piano, 1890'] and a large painting ['At the Moulin Rouge: The dance'] which holds its own very well. There's a great distinction in it, despite the risqué subject."

"Here's a short note for Bernard and Lautrec, to whom I'd solemnly promised to write.1 I'm sending it to you [Theo van Gogh, in Paris] so that you can give it to them sometime, it's not in the least urgent and it will be a reason for you to see what they're doing and to hear what they're saying, if you want."

"I don't believe that my peasant [his painting 'Portrait of a peasant'] will do any harm, for example, to the Lautrec that you [Theo] have ['Young woman at a table / Poudre de riz', 1887] and I dare even believe that the Lautrec will, by simultaneous contrast, become even more distinguished, and mine will gain from the strange juxtaposition, because the sunlit and burnt, weather-beaten quality of the strong sun and strong air will show up more clearly beside the face powder and stylish outfit. What a mistake that Parisians haven't acquired sufficient taste for rough things.."