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

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.

A newspaper that you're not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn't think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.

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.

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

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.