I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.

I've tried never to be easily satisfied, and I've been painting like fury now for forty years.... I have a feeling. You paint about as far as your emotions go, and that's about it.

I don't think that there is anything that is really magical unless it has a terrifying quality.

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers."

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited.

My struggle is to preserve that abstract flash - like something you caught out of the corner of your eye, but in the picture you can look at it directly.

If it [talent] isn’t strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it’s not worth much.