Original in Dutch: Kunst lijkt me nooit volledig of zuiver te maken. Het is of ik altijd verwikkeld ben in het melodrama van de alledaagsheid. [...]

As an artist, you're never happy with anything you do. It's part of the process. You're never really happy. I'm certainly not. That's a good thing. It means you're always striving to do better. You hope the next piece will be better.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

There is no purity in art. The process of how you arrive at something doesn't matter at all.

art doesn't typically get made by happy people.

Art doesn't typically get made by happy people.

The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this.

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.

Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear

Happiness is not essential to the artist; happiness never creates anything but memories.

Art to me is a question mark.

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.