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.

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

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.

To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.

With watercolour, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound of snow shifting through the trees or over the ice of a small pond or against a windowpane. Watercolour perfectly expresses the free side of my nature.