"At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have no will, and hardly any desires, or none at all that are to do with ordinary life."

"I want to do figures, figures and more figures, it's stronger than me, this series of bipeds from the baby to Socrates and from the black-haired woman with white skin to the woman with yellow hair and…"

"I am not an artist, I am a worker."

"If something in you yourself says 'you aren't a painter' — IT'S THEN THAT YOU SHOULD PAINT, old chap, and that voice will be silenced too, but precisely because of that."

"And as for the causes and consequences of said illness, I think I shall be wise to leave the solving of these problems to the fortuitous discussions of the Dutch catechists, that is to say whether I a…"