"...was to interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians, pictorially."

“Amrita's life was more colourful than the bright colours she used in her paintings—this is a good look at it.”

“Rose water and raw spirit...weird amalgam of the bearded star gazer and the red haired pianist pounding away at her keyboard.”

“Art in India was never the same after her comet like appearance. There are only a few moments in the history of art which pinpoint a new departure, a new direction. Such a moment in the history of modern Indian art was the appearance in the mid-thirties of Amrita Sher-Gil with whose paintings contemporary paintnig in India took shape and demonstrated the possibility of a contemporary style and expression that were, at the same time, of the soil and in direct continuation of the great national past.”

“The Brahmacharis as the most difficult thing she had ever done....don't you think I have learnt something from Indian painting?...I don't know whether it is a passing phase or a durable change in my outlook but I see in a more detached manner, more ironically than I have ever done.”

“I didn't know how much truth there was to gossip of her being a nymphomaniac, but I was eager to get to know her.”

“It is dreadful to think of Paris in German hands but what preoccupies me still more is what is going to happen to modern French art and the younger artists.”