This afternoon I just finished a print which I started Monday. We got a revolving door here in the post office [in the city Groningen] and that's suc… - Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

I never have to search for subjects, they come to offer themselves - the right form is not always there immediately and that is why it is good to draw those small sketches beforehand. Otherwise it will become too wild, the work demands great calmness and if I am bound to time - for example when Greet [his wife] thinks that I should come home earlier - [then] it starts thundering, because peace has disappeared.

the art-critic has provided the products of my lab with a (new) label: 'abracadabra'.. ..[but] one can not speak about abracadabra-ism, and that is its advantage on all –isms: it doesn't know time and limits and especially not the 'periods of time' [but] only seasons.. ..all -isms are dead, blown away, sprayed in the air, gone (here imagery does not fit, imagery is always wrong) - only for the 'abracadabra' is the future wall, the coming wall in the next house - how much the 'peinture' of other fabrics is curving and folding itself, polished or blown-up, it's all for nothing.. .We are not addressing those offspring but only the artists in this world..

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands):Het is een heel werk geweest [zijn 20 prenten van de 'Chassidische Legende']; ingespannen en zonder ophouden is er aan gewerkt [1941-1943]. Maar het was boeiend en ontspannend tevens. Nu het af is kan ik er op terugzien als een stuk van mijn leven als 't ware. Ik acht mij gelukkig dat ik dit heb kunnen volbrengen, al zullen er ook wel aanmerkingen op gemaakt worden. Daaraan is niet te ontkomen, ook al doe je je beste best.