Vincent van Gogh — "I am an artist, and I am a human being."

"Well, well, after all there are so many painters who are cracked in one way or another that little by little I shall be reconciled to it. I understand..."

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

"I am not afraid of death, I am afraid of not living."

"I want to be a man of action."

"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."