"The things are in a hand. In a fold in a sleeve.
I know all this, we've been told it and told it and I've said it. But today I really felt it. I felt our whole age was a hoax, a sham. The way people talk and talk about tachism and cubism and this ism and that ism and all the long words they use—great smeary clots of words and phrases. All to hide the fact that either you can paint or you can't.
I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don't mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don't want to be clever or great or "significant" or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children's faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain.
The essences. Not the things themselves. Swimmings of light on the smallest things.
Or am I being sentimental? Depressed.
I'm so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be".
(Collector, J. Fowles)