I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us - I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me - and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea - I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding - because the threads could not be severed.

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.

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

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

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

I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted ... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.

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.