It's precisely in those moments when I don't know what to do, boredom drives one to try a host of possibilities to either get somewhere or not get anywhere.

One cannot set out to make a work that's spiritual. What is a contemporary iconography for the spiritual? Is it some fuzzy space?

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already

Red, of course, is the colour of the interior of our bodies. In a way it's inside out, red.

The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.

All ideas grow out of other ideas

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

If you get a bad review, you take that in your stride.

I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form.

One doesn't make art for other people, even though I am very concerned with the viewer

That freedom that Picasso afforded himself, to be an artist in a huge number of ways, seems to be a huge psychological liberation.

I only fear danger where I want to fear it.

Color-blocking two bold shades feels so modern.

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

Is happiness really the only thing we should be aiming for?

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion.

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

There is a measure in everything. There are fixed limits beyond which and short of which right cannot find a resting place.

The attitudes towards mental health must change

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.