Knowledge isolates phenomena and things to observe with.. ..nothing is — Karel Appel

"I am afraid of a new barbarism which is killing mans freedom."

"in Dutch: Ik schilder als een barbaar in deze barbaarse tijd."

"Now well start the song of the wild man who lives on the mountain top, who does not want to be seen let us now start that song without words, without music, come on.. (lets not do anything for at least ten minutes) Thats the spirit, there he comes, the song of the inner voice, the song of the primitive man"

"My work is in a complete transformation. Lately, in my studio in Amsterdam, beings re-emerge more and more, but I have repainted all the canvases that I have brought with me [from Amsterdam to Paris]. It is matter itself. On the canvas, no discovery, no personal drama, no submission to a rhythm.. ..freed from Victory Boogiewoogie [title of the last work of Piet Mondrian, 1944], bepop, bepop, we free ourselves from rhythm, we are not there yet, but it is coming.. .Now I paint stains, bigger stains, colours endlessly reapplied one upon the other, I scrape and I put down new stains of colour unto nothing remains but one great plane, concentrated and linked at the same time, suddenly a vivid red or yellow and the canvas and being merge."

"I have painted like an ape. The ape phase is in all my work. My first lick of paint is the ape phase, from that I grow towards a more intellectual phase, involving the lines, the rhythm. From that phase I grow towards mankind, for that is where the power of my imagination lies. It no longer has anything to do with reality, even though the world is present in it - for we recognize people, animals, plants, you name it."

"[Appel] is a classical painter who lives much less in the madding crowd and far more in the quiet of his studios."