A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species.

If we are to depend on prayer during tough times, we should be people of prayer before the crisis hits.

There really was no point in having vision that didn't revolve a full 360 degrees because it was usually from behind that life would sneak up and overtake you.

What we really need is to realize how little we really need.

Our spirit is not dependent on the brain or body. It is eternal, and no one has one sentence worth of hard evidence that it isn’t.

What we know about writing the novel is the novel.

Let my temptation be a book, which I shall purchase, hold and keep.

I look back at my career when I was younger and can connect what I was going through at the time with the characters I was playing. I see the similarities in them reflecting on my life.

Funerals...are for the living.

I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, "Got any shoes you’re not using?

I try to look at things in a positive way. If someone says something negative to me, I'll just turn it around into a positive.