I dont think you can lightly paint a picture. Its an activity I take very seriously.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

Love came, it saw, and it conquered me.

People are predictable. That's what makes them easy to kill.

I attended the University of Earth, and earned my P.H.D in life from the school of hardship.

People who need people are threatened by people who don’t. The idea of seeking contentment alone is heretical, for society steadfastly decrees that our completeness lies in others.

Because who hasn't tried to pull their arms from the sleeves of gravity's lead coat?Who doesn't have at least one pair of wax wings out in the garage?

Today most habeas involves the federal courts overriding state convictionswhere it used to be mostly the reverse.

Everything I ever learned I was told by someone else.

You can't live life being afraid, because fear censors ambition.

You may admire a girl's curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles.

One must first learn to heal people to be great. To hurt people is easy.