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

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.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

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

Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.

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.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings