It's only my town (Chagall was born in Vitebsk), mine, which I have rediscovered. I come back to it with emotion. It was at that time that I painted my Vitebsk series of 1914. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914) I painted everything that met my eyes. I painted at my window; I never walked down the street without my box of paint.

quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 31 - My life (1922)