I think it's really important as an artist not to be drawn to the haters, because there are so many people who are nice and quiet.

I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions."

You have to be polite with your friends and your family, but in your art, it's important to not be polite.

You always feel very vulnerable when you put your work out there. You feel a kind of nakedness. And you expose something of the inner workings of the way you experience life.

I think it's important to make art that is not that easily absorbable, that is a challenge to the authorities.

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of.

If you don't have your unconscious working for you, you're really out of luck as an artist.

There was an expression of intensity in dance that was so compelling to me that I wanted a piece of that action.

A good film is always nourishing. It's not about it being hopeful or bleak; it's about how it touches you, how it moves or stirs you.

I'm not trying to be a finger-wagger at society. I sort of start with myself.

Sometimes audiences love you because they get to boo you.

Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you. It will set your free.

A smile is one of the most powerful and important body language cues we share with others—and as such a heartfelt emotion, it's impossible to express its effect on others in words.

It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide.

Do I have to talk to insane people?" "You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.

What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?

Silence was never a wrong answer.

What annoyances are more painful than those of which we cannot complain?

Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

National governments are under paid, under staffed, and under talented.