I believe that to do anything in this world one needs a love for risk and adventure, and above all, to be able to do without what middle-class families call "future."

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself, under my brush. The form becomes a sign for a woman or a bird as I work... The first stage is free, unconscious... the second stage is carefully calculated.

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

For me, a painting must give off sparks. It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem.

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.