The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I'd have been lying!

Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible - and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.

We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world.

I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.

If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised.

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

The purpose of art is mystery.