I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.

Everything changes, even stone.

I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.

I see less and less... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.