No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature.

My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50...I had the strength for new deeds and ideas.