I want to assassinate painting.

I make no distinction between poetry and painting.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

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

Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things.

What I will no longer accept is the mediocre life of a modest little gentleman.

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.