The pictures [De Kooning had] done since the 'Women', they're emotions, most of them. Most of them are landscapes and highways and sensations of that… - Willem de Kooning

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think.. ..of art as a situation of comfort.

I admit I know little of Orient art. But that is because I cannot find in it what I am looking for, or what I am talking about. To me the Oriental idea of beauty is that 'it isn’t there'. It is in a state of nor being there. It is absent. That is why it is so good. It is the same thing I don't like in Suprematism, Purism and non-objectivity... I do like the idea that they - the 'pots and pans' [pictured in the classic still life paintings], I mean – are always in relation to man. They have no soul of their own, like they seem to have in the Orient..

The sentiment of the Futurists was simpler. No space. Everything ought to keep going! That's probably the reason they went themselves. Either a man was a machine or else a sacrifice to make machines with..