Vincent Van Gogh

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through.

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

How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.

I certainly hope to sell in the course of time, but I think I shall be able to influence it most effectively by working steadily on, and that at the present moment making desperate efforts to force the work I am doing now upon the public would be pretty useless.

If you hear a voice within you saying, ''You are not a painter,'' then by all means painta and that voice will be silenced.

A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, rather, he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think, he acts and it's nothing he can explain, he just feels how things should go.

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

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill- it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies if the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'

I have drawn into myself so much that I literally do not see any other people anymore-- excepting the peasants with whom I have direct contact, since I paint them.

I want to do drawings which touch people...In figure or landscape I should wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow.

I consciously choose the dog's path through life. I shall be poor I shall be a painter...

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.

I have ... a terrible need ... shall I say the word ... of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

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

It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that when we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation - of loneliness, of poverty and misery, the end of all things, or their extreme - then rises in our mind the thought of God.

The more ugly, older, more cantankerous, more ill and poorer I become, the more I try to make amends by making my colors more vibrant, more balanced and beaming.

By working hard, old man, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it . . . .

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

A life without love is a sinful and immoral thing.

The way to know life is to love many things.