“My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50. I had the strength for new deeds and ideas.”

The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.

It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.

Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls.

If what you want to paint is the emotive mood in all its strength then you must not sit and stare at everything and depict it exactly as one sees it.

But can they great works get rid of the worm that lies gnawing at the roots of my heart? No, never.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

Art comes from joy and pain, But mostly from pain.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

Through my art I have tried to explain my life and its meaning. I have also intended to help others to clarify their lives.

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer’s art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

Without anxiety and illness I would have been like a ship without a rudder.