Paul Gauguin Quotes

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It's the only place I'm completely alone - up in the air, detached from everything.

Every day I wake up in Paris, it's real tranquillity. No pressure. I'm out of the grasp of people. I don't have a phone, and I drift a little bit.

I've been able to carve out spaces for myself. At Sundance, I'm in the mountains - my property is private. I get on a horse and ride for three, four hours. Sometimes five. I get lost. But when I'm in, I'm in.

I'm not a city kind of guy. I'm happiest when I'm tromping through the woods. That's why I don't live in Los Angeles. Being physically away from Hollywood probably loses me a few jobs, but the best ones seek me out.

The only time I can really relax is up a tree or somewhere outside. I love being outside.

It's not so much about killing an animal, it's being at peace and you don't have to worry about all the other things that go on. That's a couple of hours a week that you get to escape but it's nice to do that.

In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it's like going home.

I like going into nature and that's where I'm happiest.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife …

I would head to the countryside for peace and silence. That would be the best way, away from panicked, hysterical people.

To escape and sit quietly on the beach - that's my idea of paradise.

I just love being in the middle of nowhere.

I enjoy an easy jog. In the mountains, or the forest with my own thoughts, I can escape from the world for a bit.

I like to take long drives.I like to just enjoy the world and know what it is.

I need my outdoors, my comfort.

My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.

There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known.

I love the stars. Because they can't say anything. I love the stars. Because they do not judge anyone.

Oh, why can't we break away from all this, just you and I, and lodge with my fleas in the hills? I mean flee to my lodge in the hills.

I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.

Submit to me." So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen alseep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought.

I finally found me a cloud to float on.

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness.