An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.

Time is not money because it never returns.

Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

Like most people, you listen to yourself on the phone or an answering machine and you're like, 'Ugh.' So to do something with just your voice is hard.

Intelligence is a critical thing.

As an insecure writer, I'll finish a scene and worry there's a better version of it. Or it could be elevated somehow.

I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.

Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.

Do we mean love, when we say love?

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.

Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don't take it casually.