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My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

Sometimes people only see horrible, terrible things in my paintings.

I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn't refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.