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.

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

I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.

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

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.