Ive always thought that with de Kooning you could assimilate and copy. — Jackson Pollock

"He [Pollock] has broken the ice."

"My concern is with the rhythms of nature.. .I work inside out, like nature."

"I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural.."

"The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd.. .And in another sense, the problem doesnt exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country."

"I have a definite feeling for the West, the vast horizontality of the land, for instance.. .I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painters approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly subject-matter. Their colour is essentially Western, their vision has the basic universality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasnt intentional; probably [it] was the result of early memories and enthusiasm."

"I can control the flow of paint; there is no accident.."