The first thing to change in my painting was the color [c. 1908-09]. I forsook natural color for pure color. I had come to feel that the colors of na… - Piet Mondrian

This year [Paris 1916-17, when Mondrian didn't finish hardly any painting] I have worked hard, and done much searching. A great deal of the old [way of painting] was due for a change. I was searching for a purer representation, which is why I wasn't satisfied with anything.. .The large black and white one ['Composition in line', 1917 - second state] has also been totally reworked, which I now regret; it would have been better to leave it as it was, and make a new one. But when one is searching, one does not now in advance just how to go about it.

For when I construct lines and colour combinations on a flat surface, it is with the aim of portraying 'universally beauty' as consciously as possible. Nature (or that which I see) inspires me, provides me – as it does every painter – with the emotion by which I am moved to create something, but I want to approach the truth as closely as possible, abstracting everything until I come to the foundation – still only an outward foundation! – of things. It is for me a clear truth that one does not want to say something 'specific', it is then that one says what is most specific: the truth (which is of great universality).

[Paris, as modern city] is beautiful in its perfection, but perfection means death and decay. Thus interfering with the process of dying is a crime against perfection: it stands in the way of a higher perfection.