For instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.

And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go.

There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly.

If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.

Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing as fine for putting an atmosphere round things. Carmine is the red of wine and is warm and lively like wine. The same goes for emerald green too. It's false economy to dispense with them, with those colors. Cadmium as well.

In spite of everything, I shall rise again

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.