What I could never escape was Germany, and being German.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.

I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.

Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.

I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation.

Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.

I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface.

The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.

The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.

The fastest thing computers do is go obsolete.

I prefer being totally sober myself.

I feel like maybe I'm going to be in with the robots because they'll see the show [Westworld] and think I'm one of them.

The rise of Hamas is a product of the failures of political will in the international community, of the absence of the peace process, of the increase in violence and ideology.

An ancient prophecy ... pronounced, That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it!

Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

We may think that our tradition is exactly the same as it has always been, but that is an illusion.

I feel like I am in a box of bees when I am in a room with lots of people and I'm just looking for the door. I find myself getting more and more agoraphobic as time goes on.