The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.

I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

Just having children is a risk, Kate. We are gambling on the future, investing in the unknown with nothing but hope and blind faith. How can we keep our own safe when anyone else is in danger?

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.

No amount of sleep will ever satisfy the tiredness i always feel.

a fall from great innocence hurts the most to knowthat you are nowtainted

We have not ceased to insist that an Islam of tolerance is advantageous to all Muslims, for the Afghans and the whole world and we will always defend it.

When three persons work together, each can be the teacher in some aspects

I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.

Not to be vain, but I have nice long legs, so I like to accentuate them. Find what part of your body you love most - it can be your arms, your chest, your legs - and emphasize that.

For some it is love undeniably. For others it is making it work, never actually knowing what it is.