# Quote — Paul Gauguin, The Writings Of A Savage

> I borrow some subject or other from life or from nature, and, using it as a pretext, I arrange lines and colors so as to obtain symphonies, harmonies that do not represent a thing that is real, in the vulgar sense of the word, and do not directly express any idea, but are supposed to make you think the way music is supposed to make you think, unaided by ideas or images, simply through the mysterious affinities that exist between our brains and such arrangements of colors and lines.

- Author: [Paul Gauguin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin.md)
- Book: [The Writings Of A Savage](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage.md)
- Page: 109
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin#The_Writings_of_a_Savage_(1996)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/i-borrow-some

## More from this book

> At the age of ten, twenty, a hundred, very young, a little older, and very old, an artist is always an artist. Isn't he better at some times, some moments, than at others? Never impeccable, since he is a living, human being?

p. 219 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/at-the-age.md)

> ..color being enigmatic in itself.. ..then to be logical we cannot use it any other way than enigmatically..

p. 145 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/color-being-enigmatic.md)

> I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.

p. 22 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/i-do-not.md)