One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

And in a picture I want to say something comforting, as music is comforting.

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.

Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person.

The wheat field has ...poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak.

I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.