Two artists can suggest two different subject matters and two completely different pictures by using the same spot. Every picture demonstrates certain aspects from the inner life of the painter who made it. For this reason, the orthodox Tachist is wary of letting himself be influenced by Leonardo's famous wall... I grant the painter the right to speak, to laugh, to take a stand and to draw upon all his hallucinatory faculties. But I absolutely refuse to live like a Tachist.

'Max Ernst im Gesprach mit Eduard Roditi' (1967), as quoted in Max Ernst, Écritures Paris, 1970, p. 416