“The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.”

“..if I dont do something on the grand scale, it is that my genius is altogether imitative, and that I have nor recently encountered any very striking models of grandeur.”

“Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.”

“The train resembles the Soviet type and is quite comfortable, but all socialist structures I have ever encountered have toilets stemming from a single model engineered by the Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia to ensure that man never be allowed to forget the corruption of the flesh.”

“One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera.”

“In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.”