I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that... I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work.

Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.

I assure you that there's a lot involved in compositions with figures. ... It's like weaving... you must control and keep an eye on several things at once.

There is peace even in the storm

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.

To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life