I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended

Sometimes I have taken photographs and just felt so excited that I could barely hold the camera steady, and the photo was boring.

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'.. .I could never see these qualities in paint - I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.

I like photographs of anything uninteresting. Maybe just two doors on a wall... The point is to be uninteresting.