“We are getting mixed up with the French tradition. In talking about the necessity to 'finish' a thing, we then said American painters 'finish' a thing that looks 'unfinished', and the French, they 'finish' it. I have seen Henri Matisse's that were more 'unfinished' and yet more 'finished' than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more 'unfinished' than 'finished.”

Source: Here on Earth

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 36
Context: From 1789 to late in 1791 the French Revolution was an orderly process, and from the summer of 1794 the Republic was an orderly and victorious state. The Terror was not the work of the whole country, but of the town mob which owed its existence and its savagery to the misrule, and social injustice of the ancient regime... More lives were wasted by the British generals alone on the opening day of what is known as the Somme offensive of July, 1916 than in the whole French Revolution from start to finish.

Quote from an interview, 1966; as quoted in Minimal Art, a Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock, University of California Press, Berkeley 1968, p. 157-161
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Después de tanto huir de las cosas hechas, me he encontrado yo mismo una cosa hecha. Y sigo huyendo de las cosas hechas.
Voces (1943)

Alberto Giacometti in: James Lord (1965), Giacometti Portrait, p. 11-12; as cited in: James Olney (1998), Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing. p. 331

As quoted in TIME Magazine (30 July 1973)

Progress update on A Dance with Dragons via his website (2008)