I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.

I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.

If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence. It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.

Every single line means something.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

The more I paint the more I like everything.

Fire will attract more attention than any other cry for help.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

Keegan had never realized how absolute silence could be in the minutes before dawn. Maybe because the expectation of battle filled the air, not even birds sang.

I say to the young, be happy that you were born in Italy because of the beauty of the human capital, both masculine and feminine, of this country... No other country has such human capital.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.

The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.

Write. Publish. Repeat.

Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally.

The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.

When you're righteous, you don't have to tell people that you're righteous.

I do think a lot about the past.