The artist lives only day by day, and is the recipient of the things that surround him; he transposes sensations from outside, according to what the fate reserves him, but transforms them relentlessly and tenaciously, in a manner determined by him alone.
Source, in full
in Confidences of an artist (1894) published posthumously in Paris in 1922 as part of the book of memoirs To himself; as quoted by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925: p. 82