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.

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.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.