. . . I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.

[My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experience them in one particular instant of my emotional and imaginative life. . .

I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.

Half-way through any work, one is often tempted to go off on a tangent. Once you have yielded, you will be tempted to yield again and again. . . . Finally, you would only produce something hybrid. . .

One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.