"All my life I have drawn horses that look more like donkeys or cows. I saw them in Lyozno, at my grandfather's, where I often asked to go along to the neighbouring villages when he went to buy livestock for his butcher's shop.

At the sight of horses, who are always in a state of ecstasy, I think: are they not, perhaps, happier than us ? You can kneel down peacefully before a horse and pray. It always lowers its eyes in a rush of modesty. I hear the echo of horses' hooves in the pit of my stomach. I could race on a horse for the first time and the last towards the brilliant arena of life. I would be aware of the transcendence, of no longer being alone among the silent creatures whose thoughts of us only God can know.

These animals, horses, cows, goats among the trees and hills: they are all silent. We gossip, sing, write poems, make drawings, which they do not read, which they neither see nor hear.

I would like logo up to that bareback rider who has just reappeared, smiling; her dress, a bouquet of flowers. I would circle her with my flowered and unflowered years. On my knees, I would tell her wishes and dreams not of this world.

I would run after her horse to ask her how to live, how to escape from myself, from the world, whom to run to, where to go."

Marc Chagall, from Le Cirque 1967, New York, Pierre Matisse.

Gallery, 1981