When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

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

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?

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.

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.