This telegram is a work of art if I say it is.

Basically painting is total idiocy.

With me, it's much more a matter of accepting whatever happens, accepting all these elements from the outside and then trying to work with them in a sort of free collaboration.

I want my paintings to look like what's going on outside my window rather than what's inside my studio.

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

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.

People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity.