“I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.”

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don’t know what to say about what I paint, really.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

The best way to begin is to say: ‘Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings’.

If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of…kitsch.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

I refuse to confide and don’t like it when people write about art.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

The Obama administration has issued numerous orders essentially suspending deportations, prompting a major spike in illegal crossings.

When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).

Order, thou eye of action.

What is with waiters who don’t write anything down and memorize your order instead? Are you trying to impress me or something? If you were that smart you wouldn’t be a goddamn waiter in the first place.

When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.

Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.