I don't mess around with my subconscious

There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting.

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.

The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

I've not been cursed with talent, which could be a great inhibitor.

An empty canvas is full.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

If you're not where you wanna be in your life, why you chilling so much?

Nothing, ' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

In the end of the day, I feel pretty good about the contributions you can make.

I had a lot of negativity growing up, so I understand how to block the negativity out.

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.

The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.

Action makes more fortune than caution.

I'm about to start working with a singer I met on my last trip: she'll get international exposure, and I'll have a song out in that market sung in Cantonese.

We are an episode between two oblivions.

Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.