"[Bram van Velde's work] is a painting without precedent, in which as in no other I find what I am seeking, precisely because of this fidelity to the prison-house, this refusal of any probationary freedom."

"About Van Gogh.. a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further."

"I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life."

"There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion."

"I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do.. .You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself."

"The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it."

"Something is trying to come into the world. But I don’t know what it is. I never start by knowing. It's impossible to know. Truth is not knowledge."

"Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity."

"What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance."

"Mondrian.. .The constructivists?.. .They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I’m afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible."

"I need to go towards the illogical. This world we live in destroys us. It is always governed by the same laws. You have to create images that don’t belong to it. That are totally different from those it presents us."

"The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic."

"Painting lives only through the slide towards the unknown in oneself."

"I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole."

"When you are working, you are so far away and so absorbed, it's inevitable that you fall into a vacuum when you stop.. ..every time when I finish a painting, I always have to wait to get my strength back before I can begin another."

"The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes."

"You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going."

"Painting is getting in touch with the truth. It's a matter of summoning up the vision I need."

"It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair."

"However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness"

"If these gouaches [Bram van Velde recently made] live at all, it is because they are true, they derive from life. They are born of the unknown – and not of habit or know-how, or intention, or of some recipe.. ..there comes a time when serious work is no longer an effort. When demanding work of that kind no longer tires you."

"I don’t know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted."

"Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that’s precisely what makes it interesting."

"A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself."

"I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find."

"I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing."

"It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect.. .If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure.. .At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on.. .I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable'."

"Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough."

"What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere."

"Van Gogh.. .In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out."

"Perhaps he [ Mondrian ] was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish."

"I met Beckett at my brother’s [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head... This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings."

"It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me."

"Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere."

"I have to try to see where seeing is no longer possible, where visibility is gone."

"Each painting is linked to a fundamental drama."

"When I look back to a recent painting, I can hardly bear th suffering in it."

"Each painting contains so much suffering."

"I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic."

"I am powerless, helpless. Each time it’s a leap in the dark. A deliberate encounter with the unknown."

"Painting doesn't interest me.. .What I paint is beyond painting."

"When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That’s what I paint."

"Each of my paintings is a cycle. It’s like existence, life. They are always in motion.. .If they were fixed and static, they would be false."

"There’s always doubt. There’s nothing you can get hold of."

"Van Gogh.. Fascinating. The fragility of that strong spirit."

"Waiting for the truth."

"I am in the void. Nothing to hang on to."

"At is taking risks.. ..a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown."

"To be nothing. Just nothing. It’s a frightening experience. You have to let go of everything."

"[that] Nature stands abashed—red faced For never before has she been so well rendered By any artist.. [than Rembrandt]"