The real function of art is to change mental patterns ... making new thought possible.

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore.

There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium!

I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist…..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.

In the name of what - except perhaps the coefficient of rarity - does man adorn himself with necklaces of shells and not spider's webs, with fox fur and not fox innards? In the name of what I don't know. Don't dirt, trash and filth, which are man's companions during his whole lifetime, deserve to be dearer to him and isn't it serving him well to remind him of their beauty?