I work like a gardener.

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.

A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it's an exchange of blood, a total embrace - without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.

To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

What I am seeking... is a motionless movement, something equivalent to what is called the eloquence of silence.

I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.

The shadows of the room pool in the lines of our faces, draining our eyes of hue. "There's nothing left worth saying.

God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in man.

If you sit quiet long enough, you find out what people really think.

Some of my biggest moments have been in jam sessions, but I don't want to talk about them. There were always other people involved.

I am black or white, I'll never be grey in my life.

Passion without focus can lead you astray.

Do not ever go back to that from which decided to leave. As much as you did not ask, and how would you not want to own. Having conquered a mountain, begin to attack the other.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

No one dare disturb the sound of silence...

Just do the math. In the next 50 to 75 years, people will be living to be 130 and 140. They'll be working until they're 100. It's incredible.