When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.

Youth must go ahead and prosper. These young painters are all very talented people, but they all paint frescoes.

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

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

From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation.

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

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.