Artists make things so much easier for themselves when they learn to trust their eyes.

Most beginners are too anxious for results. Real progress takes place over a long period of time.

I always work directly from life, partly because I really enjoy having an interaction with the person in front of me but also because I love having a direct response to shape and color.

Leaving some areas less finished in a painting, or more out of focus than others, allows the imagination to finish them and gives more importance to the detailed parts.

Nothing is more beautiful than a line that brings out a form.

You have to evolve as an artist, and this is really a lifelong process.

A painting has its own existence and reality, and I make changes freely to meet the painting's needs. This sometimes takes me in another direction.

Cats sleep in a state of total abandon, and I find that state very interesting in people as well.

Sometimes working on one painting will help solve a problem in another painting.

Everything in painting is about relationship, so I judge each area by its relationship to the surrounding areas.

I usually start by doing one or more color studies of the subject on a piece of canvas taped to cardboard.

Life sucks, then you die.

I wonder now if [the gods] take from us that which we love so we must seek them, if only to scavenge for meaning in this existence.

I do not know the word 'quit'. Either I never did, or I have abolished it.

My favorite people are the ones that can make any unfunny joke hilarious by just laughing.

The possession of anything begins in the mind.

I think that the candidates who are doing it [not debating] are doing a great disservice to the party. It's a sign of an unhealthy institution.

Irrational crushes, infatuations, or obsessions. Whatever you want to label it, it's important to reach out to others.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.