It would be nice if you wouldnt call me an expressionist. Im really no — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

"I find it increasingly necessary to express my ideas first in engraving or lithography so that they may develop before I start to paint. Every year my form and expression become more sensitive, and my ideas frequently have to pass through three graphic stages before I can start on the canvas.. .I can hear you say no, that is impossible because the value of the colors demands quite different treatment from black and white, but it is the inner idea that I try to establish firmly through graphic preparation."

"..the feeling that pervades a city presented itself in the qualities of lines of force."

"I was born near a station. The first things that I saw in my life were the moving locomotives and trains, and I drew them as a three-year-old. Perhaps it is because of this that observations of movement are my impetus for my inspiration to create. Out of this I receive a creative experience of life, which is the source of creativity."

"[the way of life of Die Brücke artists] though strange to the ordinary man, was not meant to shock, it was a pure and simple compulsion to integrate art and life.."

"He [Kirchner] dwelled here in a living situation that a bourgeois would deem uncharacteristic, materially simple, but sophisticated in his artistic sensibility. He worked feverishly, without concerning himself with the time of day."

"I found it very difficult to suddenly depart [from Berlin] since this year I had risen completely in the landscape and life and hardly needed awareness to access this place."