"The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech."

"I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things."

"It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either."

"Such a person doesn't always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I'm good for something, even so! I feel I have a raison d'être! I know that I could be a quite different man! For …"

"Next, I'm attempting to do dusty thistles with a great swarm of butterflies swirling above them."