Words from Vincent Van Gogh

"I would like to make it perfectly clear to you how I look at art. To get to the essence of things one must work long and hard. What I want and have as my aim is infernally difficult to achieve, and yet I don't think I am raising my sights too high. I want to make drawings that touch some people. … There is at least something straight from my own heart in them. What I want to express, in both figure and landscape, isn't anything sentimental or melancholy, but deep anguish. In short, I want to get to the point where people say of my work: that man feels deeply, that man feels keenly. In spite of my so-called coarseness - do you understand? - perhaps even because of it. It seems pretentious to speak this way now, but that is the reason why I want to put all my energies into it.
What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low.
All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.
That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love malgré tout [in spite of everything], based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest comers. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."