It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.

The great thing about church is that it has people in it - and people can be tricky

We spend half of our lives preparing to live-instead of just living.

Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing.

It was scary how a girl couldn't live without friends.

It's rare when I feel like I can extract a lyrical message out of combining two things together.

To be positive at all times is to ignore all that is important, sacred or valuable. To be negative at all times is to be threatened by ridiculousness and instant discredibility.

Freedom may be the soul of humanity, but often you have to struggle to prove it.

Experience matters for some roles and not others.

I was conscious of the fact that it could be to my disadvantage to marry a white guy - that some folks would hold that against me.