I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.

For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other's throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting— an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.

I learned to play the instruments of war, he said, and paint in blood.

It was any outcast's nightmare.If I looked carefully, I suspected I might find it beneath the black paint of the small acrylic by the window.

Once you show someone your true colors it is impossible to paint over them.

As paint needs a canvass for its beauty to show, stars need darkness for their splendor to shine.