The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

I would like to leave this world and never return. I severed my ear, but how I wish that I had severed my heart. I shall never amount to anything.

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.