Paula Modersohn-Becker

"There are great many Rembrandts here . Even if they are yellow with varnish, I can still learn so much from them, the wrinkled intricacy of things, life itself. There is a little thing here by him.. .…"

"Today I saw an exhibition of old Japanese paintings and sculpture . I was seized by the great strangeness of these things. It makes our own art seem all the more conventional to me. Our art is very me…"

"Please let your 'hot-blooded iconoclasm' slumber a bit longer, and for a while permit me simply to be your Madonna. It's meant to be for your own good, do you believe that? Keep your mind on art, our …"

"Today I painted my first plain air portrait at the clay pit, a little blond and blue-eyed girl. The way the little thing stood in the yellow sand was simply beautiful – a bright and shimmering thing t…"

"My blonde was here again today. This time with her little boy at her breast. I had to draw her as a mother, had to. That is her single true purpose. Marvelous, these gleaming white breasts in her fier…"

"Is it true that all I ever write you about is painting and nothing else? Isn't there love in my lines to you and between the lines, shining and glowing and quiet and loving, the way a woman should lov…"

"As I was painting today, some thoughts came to me and I want to write them down for people I love. I know that I shall not live very long. But I wonder, is that sad? Is a celebration more beautiful be…"

"The intensity with which a subject is grasped – that is what makes for beauty in art."