[that] simple people brought their bodies and shared their scanty bread with the artists. Kirchner learned the course of life again in their houses. - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

After lengthy struggles I now find myself here [Dr Kohnstamm's sanatorium in Königstein, in Taunus] for a time to put my mind into some kind of order. It is a terribly difficult thing, of course, to be among strangers so much of the day. But perhaps I'll be able to see and create something new. For the time being, I would like more peace and absolute seclusion. Of course, I long more and more for my work and my studio. Theories may be all very well for keeping a spiritual balance, but they are grey and shadowy compared with work and life.

You too, find release only in art, you are one of those privileged people who have that gift, and you will be free and at peace so long as you make use of it. Art gives us an inner superiority, for it has scope for every sensation of which human beings are capable, and first and foremost for love, which is the basis for knowledge. The artist loves without wanting to possess, and no one on earth can understand that except other artists, that is why other people think us mad.

They [his 'Street Scene' paintings and drawings,he made in Berlin] originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.