By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.