Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.

Our Lord shouts and screams

If you are still alive when you read this, close your eyes. I amunder their lids, growing black.

The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self- sufficient. it is perfect.

Every time we pray our horizon is altered our attitude to things is altered not sometimes but every time and the amazing thing is that we don't pray more.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Difficult times don't come your way just so you can survive them; God uses these times in your life to form and refine you.

Imagine what I would have done with my fire-breathing fists.

When you say you're 40, you can't call yourself an ingenue any more.

there is no yesterday or tomorrow; there is only this moment. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred sixty-five days a year.

I was a very hard-edged geometric painter, strongly influenced by [Piet] Mondrian and [Theo] van Doesburg and that sort of thing.