For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

It is only too easy to catch people's attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.

To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it.

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.