It is impossible to have progress without conscience

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

A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.

Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is.

For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that [before his trip to India, circa 1975] I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful.

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.