Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.

Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.

We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting.

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

But if ever I try to mend, some other bodies would instantly break, would instantly be fragments.

Read every day and learn from what you read.

To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

If I had to do it all again, I would still want my same daughter and two sons; through laughter, tears, prayers, and blessings.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable.

You are no more at fault for having depression than if you had asthma, diabetes, heart disease, or any other illness.

He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men's mothers.

Put your badass face on and follow me.

There can be no doubt that probability increases with practice. Fortune favours the brave, fortune favours the prepared mind, and fortune favours those who work the hardest.