I cannot say why I wanted to paint. The only answer is in the pictures themselves.

How do I define a work of art? It is not an asset in the stock-exchange sense, but a man's timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of at any time, that of magically producing life out of nothing.

The life of the consciousness is boundless. It interpenetrates the world and is woven in all its imagery. Therefore, we must listen closely to our inner voice.

Consciousness is a sea ringed with visions.

The most fundamental in me is coming uppermost, and the transient, the sensational, is dispersing, because it can't adversely influence what is essential to me.

I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams.

I consider myself responsible to the coming generations, which are left stranded in a blitzed world, unaware of the soul trembling in awe before the mystery of life.

All that's left now is purely poetic work, putting more life into individual places, as I've made so sure of the fundamental mood and dimension of expression that it won't leave me groping around in uncertainty any more.

However ugly a face may be, we can discover some beauty in it if we first experience wonder before it and then begin to understand it, too.