"My only source of instruction has always been the study of works, whether of the past or contemporary artists, which can offer us an answer to our questions if we formulate these properly.. .I would never be of much use as a guide or instructor, nor have I ever wanted to be one, even when I have been asked to undertake the job ."

“When most Italian artists of my own generation were afraid to be too 'modern,' too 'international' in their style, not 'national' or 'imperial' enough, I was still left in peace, perhaps because I demanded so little recognition. My privacy was thus my protection and, in the eyes of the Grand Inquisitors of Italian art, I remained a provincial professor of etching, at the Fine Art Academy in Bologna.”

“Among the ancient painters, the Tuscan's are the ones that interest me more: above all Giotto and Massacio . Of the modern painters I think that Corot, Courbet, Fattori, and Cezanne are the most legitimate heirs to the glorious Italian tradition.”

“A white bottle is all that remain.”

“Perhaps I will have photographs taken of the still life with the round table and of the other with oranges and the furniture behind.”

“I am now working on a still life with a bottle and other objects spread out on a plane and it seems to be turning out well.”

“..my own paintings of that period remain pure still-life compositions and never suggest any metaphysical, surrealist, psychological, or literary considerations at all . My milliners' dummies, for instance, are objects like others and have not been selected to suggest symbolic representations of human beings of legendary or mythological characters. The only titles that I chose for these paintings were conventional, like 'Still Life, Flowers or Landscape', without any implications of strangeness of an unreal world .”