Hokusai Quotes

“Look at how beautiful this ink is. Now do you understand why I needed clear water? Water is the brightness of the day and the whiteness of the paper. Black is the velvet of night and the satiny ink of the paintbrush. If you know how to make ink correctly, you will never again be afraid of nightmares." Hokusai (The Old Man Mad About Drawing)”
― Françoise Place

“Watanabe-san and Sadie exchanged gifts. She brought him a pair of carved wooden Ichigo chopsticks that their Japanese distributor had had made to celebrate the release of the second Ichigo in Japan.
In return, he gave her a silk scarf with a reproduction of Cherry Blossoms at Night, by Katsushika Ōi, on it. The painting depicts a woman composing a poem on a slate in the foreground. The titular cherry blossoms are in the background, all but a few of them in deep shadow. Despite the title, the cherry blossoms are not the subject; it is a painting about the creative process---its solitude and the ways in which an artist, particularly a female one, is expected to disappear. The woman's slate appears to be blank. "I know Hokusai is an inspiration for you," Watanabe-san said. "This is by Hokusai's daughter. Only a handful of her paintings survived, but I think she is even better than the father.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Hokusai managed to integrate this into a Japanese vision of landscapes and nature prints which strike the Western viewer as utterly Japanese, and the Japanese as totally Western, even today.”
― Matthi Forrer, Hokusai: Mountains and Water, Flowers and Birds

“At the age of six, I was seized by the mania of drawing the shape of objects.
By the age of fifty, I had published an infinite number of drawings, but everything produced before the age of seventy is not worthy of consideration.
It was at the age of sixty-three that I gradually began to understand the structure of true nature, of animals, trees, birds and insects.
As a result, by the age of eighty, I will penetrate into the mystery of things; at one hundred I will have attained a degree of wonder and by the time I am one hundred and ten, whether I create a point or a line, everything will be alive.
I ask those who live as long as I do to see if I keep my word.
Written at the age of seventy-five by me, Hokusai, the old man mad about painting.”
― Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering

“If only the gods would give me ten or at least five years more, I could become a perfect artist.”
― Hokusai Katsushika