"Certainly after all you are right, damn well right - even making allowance for hope, the thing is to accept the probably disastrous reality. I am hoping to throw myself once again wholly in my work which has got behind hand."

"letter after his third attack"

"..Here I am shut up for the livelong day under lock and key and with keepers in a cell.. ..I will not deny that I would rather have died than have caused and suffered such trouble."

"When I came out of the hospital with kind old Roulin I thought that there had been nothing wrong with me, but afterwards I felt I had been ill. Well, well, there are moments when I am wrung by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy like a Greek oracle on a tripod.. .Everyone suffers here either from fever, or hallucination, or madness, we understand each other like members of the same family."

"At present I have a portrait of a woman [Madame Roulin].. .Which I've called 'la berceuse', . .It's a woman dressed in green (bust olive green and the skirt pale Veronese green). Her hair is entirely orange and in plaits. The complexion worked up in chrome yellow, with a few broken tones, of course, in order to model. The hands that hold the cradle cord ditto ditto. The background is vermilion at the bottom (simply representing a tiled floor or brick floor). The wall is covered with wallpaper, obviously calculated by me in connection with the rest of the colours. This wallpaper is blue-green with pink dahlias and dotted with orange and with ultramarine.. .Whether I've actually sung a lullaby with colour I leave to the critics.."