Some sitters don't engage with the process of having their portrait painted at all. They'll think it's a good opportunity to catch up with all their phone calls.

Art thrives on society and society thrives on its art.

I love isolation. It's very important for me to have time and space to myself when I can sit and read or write as well as paint. It's all part of the process.

It's important to start off with ideals, even if they become modified at some later stage.

I benefit from contemplation, but it's a great antidote to that, having someone interesting come into the studio environment to be painted, so that I can experience a little bit of their world.

It is intensely frustrating to be misquoted.

I'm not some kind of machine that paints pictures.

One of my principal concerns is the contradiction between appearance and reality - illusion and reality. I try to set up an expectation of sorts and then contradict it.

One of the big failings of art schools is that students aren't given any teaching on how to survive as a one-person business, which is what it is.

A contemporary painting is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it and not a predetermined figure.

I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.

He who thanks but with the lips. Thanks but in part; the full, the true Thanksgiving. Comes from the heart.

Let a thing here be noted, that the prophet of God sometimes may teach treason against kings, and yet neither he nor such as obey the word, spoken in the Lord's name by him, offend God.

Public and employer opinion often defeat society's best interests with a prejudice against middle-aged women.

It is, ... kind of a softball atmosphere out there.

The era of resisting big government is never over.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

We are not afraid of economic sanctions or military intervention. What we are afraid of is Western universities.

Our Creator shall continue to dwell above the sky, and that is where those on earth will end their thanksgiving.

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.