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

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop, At the time that I am bored or understand - I use those words interchangeably - another appetite has formed.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

Work is my joy... Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.

I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.