I tried to learn the violin for a while.

I had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour.

Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.

I have never subscribed to the Dirty Pallet school of painting.

I have to experiment with methods and I'm trying to find an authentic way of making an equivalent of the living, breathing person within the limits of a single picture.

I've had to do all kinds of jobs to pay the rent. I've even worked in a Cornish tin mine.

When I look at some of my old work, the pieces I find most interesting are the ones with people in them.

You could always go on changing things but there comes a time when you have to decide to stop.

I think most people see drawing as subservient to the subject, a sort of meditation, a studying, a searching observation, in my case, for its own sake.

I do not know everything

It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none.

When they see you down get up on your feet and try again

There's no man on this earth can even be assured he'll have a next day.

You can feel very quickly as a prisoner of your past, of the memories.

Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of which he has had visions perhaps from earliest childhood.

If I'm on the titanic I want to be steering.

Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life's most civilized pleasures.

The trick to any profession is making it look easy.

It doesn't matter what temperature the room is, it's always room temperature.