Through my art I have tried to explain my life and its meaning. I have also intended to help others to clarify their lives.

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

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

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

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

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.

It would be quite amusing to preach a bit to all those people who for many years now have been looking at our paintings and either laughed or shook their heads reproachfully. They do not believe that these impressions, these instant sensations, could contain even the smallest grain of sanity. If a tree is red or blue, or a face is blue or green, they are sure that is insanity.