Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

Without anxiety and illness I would have been like a ship without a rudder.

The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor

From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation.

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart