The local painters were my idols...These artists, too, were grown-ups, but they were grown-ups who could still see! Their eye was still in love! Like mine!

It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

Merely looking at the world around us is immensely different from seeing it.

We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes... Our looking is perfected every day, but we see less and less.

I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen

In this twentieth century, to stop rushing around, to sit quietly on the grass, to switch off the world and come back to the earth, to allow the eye to see a willow, a bush, a cloud, a leaf, is an unforgettable experience.

Illusion is the mantle of the Real