My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldnt be able to say anything.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

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.

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

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.