It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me.

I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals.

What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?

What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.

An artist need not be a minister or a collector in church, but he must have a warm heart for people, and I find it a noble thing that, for example, no winter passed without The Graphic doing something to keep alive sympathy for the poor.