It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky.

At times it is not easy for me to take up living again.

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.

Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.

Art, although produced by man's hands, is something not created by hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source out of our soul.....My sympathies in the literary as well as in the artistic field are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see most the working of the soul.