Yousuf Karsh

"Chagall lives, when he is in Paris, in a romantic old building on the Left Bank, overlooking the Seine. His studio is on the third floor; the steps to it are worn, and there are Gothic madonnas in a niche on the stairwell. The studio was neat, almost compulsively so. Along one wall stood a screen on which he had painted a pair of flying lovers…. Just then we heard children coming home from school, and Chagall said, ‘You know, when I was a boy in Vitebsk, whenever I wanted to laugh my mother would put her hand over my mouth and say, ‘Shah! Shah! Not too loud or they will come and get you.’ I could never laugh out loud. Now, when I hear children shouting and happy I thank God every day."