Perhaps then we can find ourselves, see ourselves in the work of art. Because ultimately, all seeking and aspiration ends in finding yourself, your real self of which your present self is only a weak reflection. There is no doubt that this is the ultimate, the most difficult exertion we poor men can perform.

The essential meaning of space or volume is identical with individuality, or that which mankind calls God. For, in the beginning there was space, that frightening and unthinkable invention of the force of the universe. Time is the invention of mankind; space or volume, the palace of the God

I decided to be a painter when my grandmother died. There was something about that that made a number of things clear to me. You know, I was a kid - I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - and I had loved her very much. In some way, I feel, she was one of the few people who supported me, or, that is, she loved me. And I got nonetheless a sense of an absolutely wasted, thrown-away life, like a dead cat on a garbage heap. And it made me get a very clear look at all the people around me, you know, family, their friends. The one thing that got through to me was the notion of, if there’s anything that you want to do that’s meaningful, and in my case it was painting, but I also wanted to write and compose music and make sculpture (and I’m trying to do all those things now), if there’s one thing that you want to do, do it, do it, do it.

People reach for the far-out as a context and a category when there’s not enough inside them, not enough inspiration or impulse to send them into the far-out by accident, as it were. Monet and Cezanne and the Impressionists and Picasso and Matisse and Miro and Pollock were far-out out of inner necessity, and there was no intention to shock or confound in their art. They were very much disappointed when people were shocked or confounded or puzzled by what they did.

I feel that one takes advantage, in painting, of chance or accident. In other words, you direct something to happen that surprises you, and then you use it, exploit it, cancel it, wreck it, embroider upon it, whatever, but there it is, and you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it. There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents- and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are… But, I think, there is often a lot of stupid confusion about “Oh, this just happened, so I left it in.” I think that the recognition and censoring and, again, exploitation of what is called accident, or chance, is as intellectual and is as physical as a decision you might make in dipping a sable brush into vermillion.