All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.

To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction.

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.

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

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

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

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.