“I can paint and draw. I believe this myself and a few other people say that they believe this too. But I’m not certain of whether it’s true.”

Art is a line around your thoughts.

Even when I have to write a simple letter I’m scared stiff as if faced with looming seasickness.

There is no self-portrait of me.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I’m a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening – figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.

After tea it’s back to painting – a large poplar at dusk with a gathering storm. From time to time instead of this evening painting session I go bowling in one of the neighbouring villages, but not very often.

True relaxation, which would do me the world of good, does not exist for me.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me.

There is always hope, as long as the canvases are empty.

Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for thought both early and late – thoughts both about and not about art.

On my first days here I did not start work immediately but, as planned, I took it easy for a few days – flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little.

Whoever wants to know something about me – as an artist which alone is significant – they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

Sometimes I miss out the morning’s painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.

What do drawings mean to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity.

No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy.

The long night of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion.

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.

We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation – that is what makes it revolutionary – but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims – that is what makes it realistic.

Do not be afraid to offer ideas that draw opposition. Remember, if no one is against your idea, then your idea probably doesn’t do anything.