When I enter the studio, I leave my body at the door the way the Moslems leave their shoes when they enter the mosque, and I only allow my spirit to go in there and paint.

When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection.

For me painting is a dramatic action in the course of which reality finds itself split apart

When you begin a picture you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

I simply painted images of what was before my eyes; it is for others to find hidden meaning in them.

The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.