I almost never do drawings, because I have found over the years that doing something in one medium and translating into another doesn't work. I like to conceive a painting in real scale and in color.

Photographs and reality are just night and day. In reality, the information is all there. A photograph is just kind of a hint.

If you find yourself with a weakness, attack it... don't develop a technique that avoids your weaknesses.

It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision.

Realism has to be such high quality, you can't fake it. It's all hanging out there like the laundry.

A language not based on universal symbols or sensations is gibberish, a pitfall of modern art, no longer modern.

I try to think and design in color.

Nature is the best and really the only real vocabulary that an artist can legitimately work with.

We... joked a little about presidential portraits. He [Bill Clinton] told me that he and Harrison Ford had been joking recently about how chins drop with age, and he didn't want to look that way.

My career doesn't depend on painting Bill Clinton.

I'm drawing in my head pretty much.

A dwarf will always tell tall stories.

I hold a little fundraiser every day. Its called going to work.

I am facing a challenge, I am not facing defeat. Remember this.

A man in love is an awful sight.

It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.

Photography is a tool for dealing with things everybody knows about but isn’t attending to. My photographs are intended to represent something you don’t see.

The last time I saw a brow that low I was watching slides in anthropology class

There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.

There's always a nice tune [on radio] - helps you get the dishes done . I like to get the news from time to time - not too often. I don't feel deprived.

Because education is the backbone of a competitive workforce and successful economy, making it a priority is not uncommon.