I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.