A painting, you know, it's all dirty material. But it's about transformation. Taking that earth, that heavy earthen kind of thing, turning it into air and light.

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.

When you're using a long brush, you have your arm at full length. Basically, it exaggerates the movement of your body. But I always start far away and end up really close.

Holding together a kind of tension. When you see a painting that's really good that's what it's doing.

A work of art is a renewable source of energy.

I'm an abstract painter not just for myself, but because I really believe in abstraction.

Painters are amongst the priests - worker priests of the cult of man - searching to understand but never know.

I've always worn a hat when I work. I think it also comes from a picture of Rothko I saw with a painter's hat on.

I don't remember any dream. All I remember is waking up and feeling that there had been a change while I was sleeping.

When you're not smoking anymore, you don't have to carry around a pack of cigarettes, a lighter - all this paraphernalia. So you're liberated in a certain sense. It's the same with drinking.

I respect all artists, just some more than the others. Because it's something that really needs to be done.

Everything that happens in your future is a direct result of what you do today.

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.

A sense of contentment is a key factor for attaining happiness

See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.

The team you build is the company you build.

What I try to do is to keep emotion on a tight leash; otherwise, it can never be transubstantiated into poetry.

I'm going to keep living my life the way I've been living my life, and nothing is going to change that even if the Olympics are coming up.

I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.