So now, how did God produce this world?... The fable is that he breathed upon us. In his breath, his wind, came moisture and things began to grow... a message of hope. Nothing physical. How do you intend for your breath to become a work of art? The only way I can see it is that you prevent your breath from becoming a structure. As soon as your breath takes on the form of a room, you are a carpenter; you're not God.

I painted myself out of my painting.

Painting is... a correspondence between what you are and what you see. It's a moment when something is holding together in such a way that it is a universe in itself... Within this is a test and also a judgment upon yourself, your capabilities, your promises, and the part that you play in the world. And nobody else can test that for you. Certainly not the Museum of Modern Art.

There are people who can't stand the pain. What happens is they begin to develop some kind of technique to keep out of that hole. Once they do that, they're finished. They never go any further. They're done.

As long as you can change paint, you don't change. For you to change - for paint to do something to you - paint must stay constant.

It's absolutely irrelevant what galleries and critics and people who buy your paintings think. They just don't have any possible idea of what happens to you and they're really not that interested. As a matter of fact, they hate the idea that anything really happens to you. They want you to be a genius and that's it.

You have to give in to what the paint says... You have to do what it's telling you to do.