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

Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.

I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions.

If I declare it to be so, then this is a portrait.

This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.

There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism - as though the man and the work were the same - that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.

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