A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.

By working hard, old man, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it . . . .

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.

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

Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.

Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what painting is.