l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.

We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: “He is the one.” But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.

We take death to reach a star

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.

My sketchbook is a witness of what I am experiencing, scribbling things whenever they happen.

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

To the one party, woman is always heresy and diabolical. To me, the opposite.