“Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already…”

“My main difficulty was that I could not paint fast enough. My pictures are all moments of my life – I mean instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it's like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim. Well, it was Kandinsky who taught me the technique of swimming. I mean that he taught me to work fast enough, and with enough self-assurance, to be able to achieve this kind of rapid and spontaneous recording of moments of life.”

“There's no indication or hint about the material world in my painting. No, I don't paint about the world. Everybody else is painting about the world. That's enough.”

“It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.”

“I think I'm going back
To the things I learned so well
In my youth.
I think I'm returning to
The days when I was young enough
To know the truth.”

“People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.”

“My mother came to a Smashing Pumpkins gig once, and I was wearing a dress. She was very upset. She said, 'Everyone's gonna think you're a fag.' I said,'Well, they already think I'm an asshole.”

“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”

“I painted for 20 years without liking them very much, you know. I burnt them at the end of every year. For 20 years I burnt the whole bunch because I didn't want them to get in the market. And well, sometimes when I was starving, I used to sell one cheap, you know. But I always regretted it because you hate to think of a painting in somebody's house that you don't like well enough, you know.”

“Why should I believe any of this?'
It happens that fast.
I say, because I think I like you.
Marla says, 'Not love?'
This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.”