My uniform is sweatpants, so crusted over with dried paint that they're as hard as a table. I wear T-shirts that are also covered in paint, and Crocs.

Most days, I practice piano in the mornings and I spend the rest of the day painting.

I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished quality that leaves within you that sense of possibility.

It's not until the very last phase that you know how good the works are going to be.

My 20s were spent in a room, alone, mixing paints and figuring it all out.

Painting is something that requires a lot of time - it's not just one good idea out of art school.

I'm not such an artist type that I can't handle the real world. I read the financial pages, because most people don't talk about art.

If you come every day or every month to my studio, you won't see that much change, but if you come once a year, you'll see big new categories opened up.

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.

The world of painting has nothing to do with the art world.

Hope is soothing, but it can become deceptive if we cling to it as the last resort against reality.

Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought.

What the Nation must realize is that the home, when both parents work, is non-existent. Once we have honestly faced that fact, we must act accordingly.

There's never enough time to do nothing!

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

I'm putting on a suit and tie when I go see The Great Gatsby.

I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead--that's environmentally sound.

I don't read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis.

If I repent now will God forgive me? No, but if God forgives you, you will repent.

I could always see myself being a teacher. I remember sitting in class as a kid, listening to the teacher and thinking, you know, I'm pretty sure I could explain that a little bit better.