As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done

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

I've reached the moment where the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself.

To be young, really young, takes a very long time.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand.

In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.