You dig in and you find something.

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.

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

Sadly, the words "reliable" and "accurate" can rarely be applied to the workings of the brain, particularly for memory.

People don't have these tidy little redemption arcs in reality the way they do in movies.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

I have been disillusioned, however, this long, long time in the means used by any but the saints to live in this world God has made for us.

The night below. We two. Crystal of pain. You wept over great distances. My ache was a clutch of agonies over your sickly heart of sand.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

Everyone is an expert on T.V., just as he is on education; everyone has some education and a T.V. set.

Don't forget I'm from a military family. I was in special training in the army. I am tall, sporty and - how do you say - you can always protect yourself... I have very strong security.

I live by two credos: If you don't ask, you don't get. And most things don't work.

To some extent I'm guilty of wishful thinking. The absence of the interstitial I find unbearable.