I remember that Michael Werner told me about a famous collector, and Michael set up an appointment for us to meet. This man looked around the room and at my pictures. Then he said, "Young man, why are you doing these horrible things? Look out the window. There are nice girls out there. It's springtime. Look at how beautiful the world can be. You'll ruin your health by smoking so much and doing such tortured things."

As an artist, I have been a risk-taker. And I've done a lot of different things. I don't make it easy for people. Identification is difficult. One doesn't recognize my art right away.

I have always had the feeling that other people are too stupid to discover interesting things. That's why I do it myself. I think of collecting as a way to show that I understand what's important better than others do.

I did not always trust my teachers, because I found them too weak. I was looking for something that could take me in a new direction, for things that I could admire. And because it was so hard to find this, I became a sort of outsider. That's why I began to identify with the insane, "outsider" artists.

What I could never escape was Germany, and being German.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns.. your thought process goes on.