“Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.”

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

Anybody who perceives colors can become a painter. It’s simply a question of whether or not one has felt anything and whether one has the courage to recount the things one has felt.

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

Some colors reconcile themselves to one another, others just clash.

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

I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one’s emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have.

A work of art comes only from inside a human being.

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor.

My will exceeds my talents.