I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

What you see is what you see.

I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall.

You see what you know!

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion…What you see is what you see.

Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will come later.

A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.

The aim of art is to create space.

I'm more of a house painter.That's the way I work.

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.

I am part of you and you are part of me. We are one even though we have separate bodies.

you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it

Hate is such a luxurious emotion it can only be spent on one we love.

Your next victory is behind your next test.

You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can't just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it.

He who believes needs no explanation.

I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

In Russia, we have proverb: Only bad soldiers don't want to be general.