A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious; such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance.

Art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life.

The artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is too narrow, he has to open up to new perspectives.

When I talk of reality, I am always thinking of essentials. Profundity is not located in some remote, inaccessible region. It is rooted in everyday life.

They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes. I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought.

The highest wisdom adopts the humblest of bodies.

I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.

Painting quickly is a calculated act to block out rational thought.

The tattoo can only exist as part of the skin, as a drawing always is an incision in the material and therefore cannot be parted from it.

I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.

My illusion is to have something to transmit. If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost, " while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head.

I worked very hard and I earned all the attention I'm getting.

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species . . . and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

Every role you do is kind of a side of yourself. That's why they give you the part.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war.

We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.