This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and color. On the contrary, it should find its expressi… - Piet Mondrian

The abstract human mind will have to receive the intended impression by its own means. I always confine myself to expressing the universal, that is, the eternal (closest to the spirit) and I do so in the simplest of external forms, in order to be able to express the inner meaning as lightly veiled as possible.

I often sketched by moonlight {in the 1890's] - cows resting or standing immovable in flat Dutch meadows, or houses with dead, blank windows. I never painted these things romantically, but from the very beginning I was always a realist.

When I first saw the work of the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Van Dongen and the Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.