Vincent van Gogh

What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I'd like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody.

I'm not making a point of it, because the painting is one of the ugliest I've done. It's the equivalent, though different, of the potato eaters. I've tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green.

It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day.

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.

I wish they'd simply accept me as I am.

You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way.

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 what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There's something within me, so what is it! That's an entirely different idler; you may, if you think fit, take me for such a one.

I also don't think that it would be a hindrance if my health let me down on occasion.

I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.

The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant colour, well arranged, resplendent.

The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts ... it astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.