In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

Focusing isn't just an optical activity; it is also a mental one.

An artist's failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.

If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it's wanton behaviour, so to speak. It is promiscuous like nothing.

The word 'paradox' has always had a kind of magic for me, and I think my pictures have a paradoxical quality, a paradox of chaos and order in one.

For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.

I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind.

It is important that the painting can be inhabited, so that the mind's eye, or the eye's mind, can move about it credibly.

It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising.

Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science.

What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?

One by one bright gifts from heaven Joys are sent thee here below; Take them readily when given, Ready, too, to let them go.

There is no gains without pain.

So often among so-called "primitives" one comes across spiritual personalities who immediately inspire respect, as though they were the fully matured products of an undisturbed fate.

Creativity asks you to enter realms with uncertain outcomes. People want to create a safe life for themselves so they try to live without fear and they end up killing their creativity in the process.

Thought and action must never part company.

There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together.

When I can't sleep, I don't count sheep. I count lovers. And by the time I reach 38 or 39, I'm asleep.

Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.

I can’t believe you cheated! (Phobos) I can’t believe you didn’t know it. Man, what kind of god are you? I never knew stupidity had a divine representative. Guess I was wrong, huh? (Deimos)