I have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the interior lives of your subject.

I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire to throw away the old rules.

The backgrounds by design are a very key part of the conversation, because I want a kind of fight or pressure to exist between the figure and the background.

All art is self-portraiture.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at.

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.

We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

To be confident is to act in faith.

Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

Some people wonder why they can't have faith for healing. They feed their body three hot meals a day, and their spirit one cold snack a week.

You can hardly say boo to a goose in the House of Commons now without cries of "Ungentlemanly," "Not fair" and all the rest.

I think it's an individual thing. Your mountains are my molehills.

The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline.

Power immobilizes; it freezes with a single gesture-grandiose, terrible, theatrical, or finally, simply monotonous-the variety which is life.

But the point is to get a whole new generation of people and people in general more re-engaged in news, and this has happened a lot since September 11th of course.

Are you still thinking, looking, living, as from an imaginary phenomenal centre? As long as you do that you can never recognise your freedom.