“Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.”

I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint.

Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I’m exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I’ve set out to do.

No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.

I’m knocked out, I’ve never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I’m quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy.

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.

I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.

It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

Just close your eyes and enjoy the rollercoaster that is life.

Life isn’t a music player where you choose whats being played, it is a radio where you have to enjoy whats being played.

In soft regions are born soft men.

Life is one darn thing after another.

As a female I think it’s a terrible hindrance in business. I think it’s a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it’s even worse because there’s deep resentment.

If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God.

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.