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.

Photography is an art which touches and grips one's own heart's blood.

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

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.

My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.