It is very scary to think mechanically about someone you know. That means that the second time you meet a person is useless. Which I tend to believe anyway.

Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

Fashion is the pursuit of perfection, Style is the acceptance of one's flaws.

My portraits are half what I see and the other half is invented or dictated by the person and the painting.

I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.

I repeatedly refuse to make any practical decisions. I get a feeling of nausea about practicality.

When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one?

There's poetry in the world. Poetry doesn't belong just to the poets. You know, you can look at the most premeditated, cold blooded movie and find poetry in it.

When I look at a drawing of a person, I look at that person as living.

To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.

Dani said this woman, with whom she’d lived for two years, had never known her. “I feel like people accept the first thing I show them, ” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.

We are so confused till a state that we do not know where we are standing ...

We are in this period now where we all are trying to be in shape physically and deny ourselves any pleasure.

Doubting pleases me no less than knowing

I'm not making any plans. I'm just going to let the universe surprise me.

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

If somebody accuses you in a story of being a crook, you can demand that they prove it. But if a comic says it and you protest, people say, 'What's the matter, you can't take a joke?

What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.