I like a canvas to breathe and be alive. Be alive is the point. And, as the limitations are something called pigment and canvas, let's see if I can do it.

I need to be alone for certain periods of time or I violate my own rhythm.

The key is what is within the artist. The artist can only paint what she or he is about.

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.

I am never free of the past. I have made it crystal clear that I believe the past is part of the present which becomes part of the future.

I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes.

I think, if one is a painter, all you experience does come out when you’re painting.

Painting... in which the inner and the outer man are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.

We get used to a certain kind of colour of form or format, and it's acceptable. And to puncture that is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty soon, that's very acceptable.

As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically.

I knew de Kooning and I went to his studio so I knew about de Kooning's work. But only a little handful knew about it, you know. Maybe there were ten people that knew about it.

The Advanced Level is Mastery of the Basics

I did not find my studies particularly enthralling.

In my dreams I sleep with everybody.

I think the whole experience of being a human being on the planet is such a mystery, to be honest. Trying to figure out one's purpose and [asking] "What is it all about?"

Civility is only a passenger - not a driver - on the information superhighway.

At Cambridge, you have to kiss the vice-chancellor's fingers. But I missed out on that, 'cause I was doing a matinee. I don't want to kiss a strange man's fingers anyway.

I like the fact that I have good old-fashioned British teeth with a big gap.

Numerical quantities focus on expected values, graphical summaries on unexpected values.

I think Little Nicky was a divergence from the films Adam Sandler was used to doing, and he was taking a risk. I admire him for doing that.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.