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.

Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

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?

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

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

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.