My pictures really finish themselves.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

to a big pride, a little soul

I wake up to find magic, I seek dreams and I crave imagination. This is my creed.

Every plant is an individual.Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

Life is where you're at. Whatever you're doing is enough. You don't need to do everything well all the time. When you live your life like that, it's a huge relief.

I believe that Islam and freedom are incompatible.

Racial and denominational schools impart to the membership of their communities something which the general educational institution is wholly unable to inculcate.

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate