The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.

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.

I worry if we die and become stars, how will you hold me? and how will I kiss you?

There is no illness that is not exacerbated by stress.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

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We all go through rough times. We have those obstacles that seem too large to overcome or that current that you never seem to swim out of. We have to decide what matters most to us - our passions.

You always hear people say that having kids changes everything, but you can't fully realize it until you have children yourself.

I didn't need more fame or money. I needed more heart.

I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I? When love becomes vast love becomes wordless. And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep.

If I, being a mother of two, can win a medal, so can you all. Take me as an example and don't give up.

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.