In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color

A work of art comes only from inside a human being.

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.

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

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

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.

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