To everyone around him, Don Quixote is an absurd, laughable madman. Yet what I want to speak of is the courage that lies behind that absurdity. In his own eyes, everything he faces is utterly real, and he is willing to fight for that reality. His devotion to a world that never existed in the form he imagines approaches faith rather than delusion.

What I wanted to illustrate is not his absurdity but his courage itself. In my image, I granted him what he truly longed to be: a real knight. I am concerned with the sheer force of a man who believes, against everything, in what he sees. When courage is taken seriously and painted to its fullest, he becomes the very person he always believed himself to be: a knight with conviction, worthy of reverence.