I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.

If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.