If you end up falling in love with someone, it's because of them. If you end up hating someone, it's because of you.

But for one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.

One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.