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.

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

The sight of stars makes me dream.