Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading.

One of the first drawings I did in Paris - I wasn't thinking of doing drawings, but somehow or other, I kept drawing - I bought a hyacinth flower with a lot of leaves, just to make me feel like spring.

All my work begins with drawings.

I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes.

I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.

I said, I don't want to paint things like Picasso's women and Matisse's odalisques lying on couches with pillows. I don't want to paint people. I want to paint something I have never seen before. I don't want to make what I'm looking at. I want the fragments.