"These are exaggerations from the point of view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts...People will tell me the mountains aren't like that... "I've tried to express the time of day when one sees the green beetles and the cicadas flying in the heat."
There's a good article by William Underhill in Newsweek, called "Van Gogh's Letters: Writing in Color." He writes:
"Painting was never his only creative passion. Fluent in French and English, van Gogh steeped himself in the literature of the day. His letters make reference to more than 800 books and 150 authors. What he prized in writing was the same focus on everyday life that he sought in his own art. His favorite writers included Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, and Honoré de Balzac—all chroniclers of grim social conditions that van Gogh had witnessed. His enthusiasm for words spilled into his art. In one letter he remarks, "Books and reality and art are the same kind of thing to me."
In another letter, he revealed his appreciation of writers and writing: "There are so many people, especially among our pals, who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don't you think, it's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint things?"
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