One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it forever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers [sisters], love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force.
extract from: a letter to his brother, Vincent Van Gogh, July 1880
