I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.