WILLIAM SCOTT

On occasion I have drawn as a release from painting. The economy in using paper, pencil, charcoal and crayon can help towards a greater gamble and higher rewards. I also find that drawing can generate ideas more rapidly than painting.

You just don't want to push people into doing things that they really don't want to do. I don't think it's going to produce much.

I no longer worry whether a painting is about something or not. I am only concerned with the expectation, from a flat surface, of an illusion.

The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.

The one thing you've got to say about Columbia is that it has courses that are famous. It has alumni who come back and say it was the best thing they ever did.

There are certain authors that do not turn students on; it is the truth. Homer happens to be one of them.

I feel constricted if I become too much aware of the act of making. Liberty is lost and instead of an instinctual lyrical expression the whole thing becomes arid.

Every painting I do is related to the last one: it may be a continuation of a previous painting or it may be a reaction against it.

A dinner lubricates business.

I've always played the guys that end up having the wisecracks.

I draw to shock myself out of a too-easy rhythm - I may begin with no conception whatever, an image emerges . I rub it out and begin again, searching for its counterpart. When it appears I invariably find that the thing I draw is at my elbow, it is out of the window, or has been standing at my front door for a long time.

I also have this kind of fascination with Don Quixote, kind of like wanting something you're not going to get. I like that a lot.