Wherever art appears, life disappears.

I feel most real to myself in the studio.

Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.

For twenty years I read a book a day, from the time I was seven until I was twenty-seven.

The main thing is not to be dead.

It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it.

A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.