Etel Adnan

“Once I put down a color, I never cover it up. If you are born a musician, why become a banker?”

“Mount Tamalpais became my house. For Cezanne, Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain. It was an absolute. It was painting.”

“Usually, I am a compulsive person, and I need - sometimes urgently - to paint... Painting is close to poetry, is a kind of poetry expressed visually. It has to be spontaneous, rapid - at least in my case.”

“Do what your inner soul tells you to do, regardless of any money or success it will bring you.”

“Colours exist for me as entities in themselves, as metaphysical beings.”

“We were taught to think that Paris was the center of the universe.”

“I always had a few people who liked what I did, and that was enough.”

“I write what I see; I paint what I am.”

“I didn't want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.”

“I love Nicolas de Stael particularly, and my work can remind people of him. But looked at attentively, our works are not similar at all.”

“Places are part of nature, of the bigger picture. We are interrelated. When we contemplate them in their own right, they can sometimes change our lives; they can become spiritual experiences.”

“My writing and my paintings do not have a direct connection in my mind. But I am sure they influence each other in the measure that everything we do is linked to whatever we are, which includes whatever we have done or are doing.”