Never, never do I set to work on a canvas in the state it comes in from the shop. I provoke accidents - a form, a splotch of color. Any accident is good enough. I let the matiere decide. Then I prepare a ground by, for example, wiping my brushes on the canvas. Letting fall some drops of turpentine on it would do just as well. If I want to make a drawing I crumple the sheet of paper or I wet it; the flowing water traces a line and this line may suggest what is to come next.

Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.

The more I work, the more I want to work.

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

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

I make no distinction between poetry and painting.

The simplest things give me ideas.