The Cobra group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child — fresh and new. Sometimes… - Karel Appel

You can see the roughness of structure and the spots like wounds from battles on the canvas. The tops of skyscrapers with windows like eyes constantly remind you that there are laws surrounding the wastelands, and so you hide in the deep grass when you make love to a girl in dirty clothes, and experience how your nerves of seeing become stronger and stronger and every little sound more and more intense. That's what Pasolini's poetry is partly about; he was a street guy and therefore I avoided beautiful new wood or metal for his sculpture.. .The wasteland was Pasolini's other side; the boys, the knives, the nights, the tensions.

..because I live in Paris, but just outside Paris at the start of Yonne, I have a barn, a very, very big barn.. ..right near Auxerre, a barn forty meters long, six meters wide and fifteen meters high, and I do all my work there.. it's like a large street, you know.

Every day I have to be awake to escape.. .The whole world is sleepy. It is a real fight to be awake, to see everything new, for the first time in your life.