Painting... in which the inner and the outer man are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.

I need to be alone for certain periods of time or I violate my own rhythm.

The key is what is within the artist. The artist can only paint what she or he is about.

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.

I am never free of the past. I have made it crystal clear that I believe the past is part of the present which becomes part of the future.

I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes.

I think, if one is a painter, all you experience does come out when you’re painting.

I like a canvas to breathe and be alive. Be alive is the point. And, as the limitations are something called pigment and canvas, let's see if I can do it.

We get used to a certain kind of colour of form or format, and it's acceptable. And to puncture that is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty soon, that's very acceptable.

As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically.

I knew de Kooning and I went to his studio so I knew about de Kooning's work. But only a little handful knew about it, you know. Maybe there were ten people that knew about it.

I have people I call friends

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.

The future is too good to waste on lies and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The real history, the one that counts and is not to be found in books, is precisely this one, the one made by simple men; and it is the only one that rules the world.

Happy and successful homes cannot be built on immorality.

Whatever obscurities may involve religious tenets, humility and love constitute the essence of true religion; the humble is formed to adore, the loving to associate with eternal love.

I became a Christian when I was a little six-year-old boy.

I don't understand the music but I certainly understand the girl singer!

I write because I love doing it.