It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.

You recognize God when you begin to recognize people

When we are healthy, wealthy and powerful, we forget about our mortality. It’s only when irreparable cracks set in that we come back to reality.

When mind is so easy, body becomes so tranquil and so fearless.

For thy sake tobacco I Would do anything but die.

Thanks, but that's not going to fix anything. It's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

A new poll out taken by a Republican group that shows most Democrats prefer socialism to capitalism. Those terms don't mean what they did maybe 40, 50 years ago.

I went over to the Charlestown Navy Yard yesterday and saw some big men of war, one over 100 guns.

You have a lot of young people who still feel somewhat marginalized, even if they do vote for Hillary Clinton.

We laugh to survive. Then, with joy we thrive.

Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.