[In June 1997,] I looked at the table with all the paints and brushes and paint rags and canvases.  The canvases I'd brought from Paris.  Eight pristine canvases, already stretched, everything done by hand.  I said, "I can't die and let someone else paint on my canvases."

I had a vision of a mauve flower.  I said, "I'll do that on one of those canvases."  Then more and more crept into my mind and wanted to be painted.  I could hardly finish one before I’d start the next one.

     —from interview with Cate McQuaid, “Dorothea Tanning Paints Again, and Speaks for Herself,” The Boston Sunday Globe, April 4, 1999, p. N6.


[Returning to New York after Max Ernst's death, it was James Merrill] who more than anyone at that point of my life, made me realize that living was still wonderful even though I felt that my loss, Max, had left nothing but ashes.  So if I took up brushes again, and the pen, to work for 20 more solitary years — and am still at it — it was Jimmy who made me want to, and so proved himself right.

     — from interview with John Glassie, “Oldest Living Surrealist Tells All,” Salon.com, February 11, 2002.