I have to change to stay the same.

- Willem De Kooning

What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.

- Willem De Kooning

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

- Willem De Kooning

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep p…

- Willem De Kooning

I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It …

- Willem De Kooning

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

- Willem De Kooning

You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.

- Willem De Kooning

The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have an image in mind, but …

- Willem De Kooning

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to pu…

- Willem De Kooning