But it's on days like this that one would like to go and see some friend or would like a friend to come to the house; and it's on days like this that one has an empty feeling when one can go nowhere and nobody comes. But it's then that I feel how much the work means to me, how it gives tone to life, apart from approval or disapproval; and on days which would otherwise make one melancholy, one is glad to have a will.

I also think it is possible to achieve success without having to start out with despair. Even though one loses out here and there, and even though one sometimes feels a kind of exhaustion; one must rally and take courage again, even though things should turn out differently from what one originally intended.

What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How is one to get through that wall - since pounding at it is of no use? In my opinion one has to undermine that wall, filing through it steadily and patiently. And there you are - how can one continue such work assiduously without being distracted or diverted, unless one reflects and orders one's life according to principles? And as it is with art so it is with other things. And great things are not something accidental, they must be distinctly willed.

Of course one always feels, and one must feel, when at work, a kind of dissatisfaction with oneself, a longing to do it much better; but still it is delightful and comforting little by little to get a collection of all kinds of figures together, though the more one makes the more one wants to make.

The Complete Collection