In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

It is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day.

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates modern painting and poetry at its heart.