My paint is like a rocket, which describes its own space. I try to make the impossible possible. What is happening I cannot foresee, it is a surprise…

- Karel Appel

The duty of the artist is not to be calculating in any sense, so that he may be free himself of human emotions while carried by the universal forces …

- Karel Appel

My brush-strokes start in nothing and they end in nothing, and in-between you find the image.

- Karel Appel

I don't paint, I hit.

- Karel Appel

I'm not a pessimist. Maybe I don't have a primitive feeling of happiness, that is true. Sometimes my color is happy but not the expression.

- Karel Appel

As an artist you have to fight and survive the wilderness to keep your creative freedom. Creativity is very fragile.

- Karel Appel

If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbarous age

- Karel Appel

You have to learn it all, then forget it and start again like a child. This is the inner evolution.

- Karel Appel

Through play, we renew contact with childhood – My art is childlike.

- Karel Appel