Art thrives on society and society thrives on its art.

I love isolation. It's very important for me to have time and space to myself when I can sit and read or write as well as paint. It's all part of the process.

Some sitters don't engage with the process of having their portrait painted at all. They'll think it's a good opportunity to catch up with all their phone calls.

It's important to start off with ideals, even if they become modified at some later stage.

I benefit from contemplation, but it's a great antidote to that, having someone interesting come into the studio environment to be painted, so that I can experience a little bit of their world.

It is intensely frustrating to be misquoted.

I'm not some kind of machine that paints pictures.

One of my principal concerns is the contradiction between appearance and reality - illusion and reality. I try to set up an expectation of sorts and then contradict it.

One of the big failings of art schools is that students aren't given any teaching on how to survive as a one-person business, which is what it is.

A contemporary painting is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it and not a predetermined figure.

Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals.

There is nothing like another's perspective to remind you that your way is not the right way

I don't really have a retirement plan.

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up.

One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.

It was not easy for a person brought up in the ways of classical thermodynamics to come around to the idea that gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information.

I tend to think of myself as a highly emotional writer. It's all coming out of the deepest feelings, out of dreams, out of the unconscious.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

I try to put in every one of my movies some sort of message. I don't want to overdo it, because I don't want people to get annoyed by it, but it's good to have a message.

Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite and surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.