The works have to look like they're confident. But they also have to look sort of troubled. It's this weird thing: "Does that look confident and troubled?" It's a bit like difficult poetry.

All accidents and experiments, and discoveries, are what my work is about. The problem that I have as an artist is being way too critical.

It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.

Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.

That’s the huge problem with an abstract painting. When are you done? You’re done when you don’t want to do it anymore.

Being bad. Discomfort with your body. Bad self image. All those things turn you into an artist. The same things that keep you from being in a proper marriage.

I've never read a book on shape. I've read books on gesture; I've read tons of books on color, surface, field, ground, representation, abstraction. But I've never read a book on what a shape is.

A lot of what I do in my work is taking a thing and either washing it off, scraping it, covering it, scraping it and then washing it, turning it upside down. Making it somehow blind.

I found out I was pregnant seven days after my wedding. I was on honeymoon with my family.

The Jews deserved to die. I have no regrets. If I had the chance I would do it again.

One who sings with his tongue on fire, gargles in the rat race choir.

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate.

The chief art of learning is to attempt but a little at a time.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

True, Heaven prohibits certain pleasures; but one can generally negotiate a compromise.

I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in the act of painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive, disoriented, and out of it.

While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.