"'Oral history interview with Edward Hopper', 1959 June 17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, interviewer John Morse."

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“The domination of France in the plastic arts has been almost complete for the last thirty years or more in this country . If an apprenticeship to a master has been necessary, I think we have served it. Any further relation of such a character can only mean humiliation to us. 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 only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”

“The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.”

“All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.”

“It is hard for me to know what to paint. It comes slowly.”

“I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.”

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