To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination.

- Frank Auerbach

I destroy things every day in the act of working and often recall a picture I had considered finished in order to rework it.

- Frank Auerbach

It seems to me madness to wake up in the morning and do something other than paint, considering that one may not wake up the following morning.

- Frank Auerbach

Ideally, one should have more material than one can possibly cope with.

- Frank Auerbach

Real style is not having a program - it's how one behaves in a crisis.

- Frank Auerbach

I'm hoping to make a new thing for the world that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing.

- Frank Auerbach

The unity in any painter's work arises from the fact that a person, brought to a desperate situation, will behave in a certain way... style.

- Frank Auerbach