The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.

There's a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I've got my specialist subject - in the Mastermind sense - and I wouldn't change it, or who I am.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.

Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.

I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more.

Joy, you are my everything. You are everything that matters to me. Tell me that you understand. Tell me that you feel this, too.

If you're going to put yourself above everybody else, you might end up alone.

If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.

If you intend to die, you can do anything.

Every little kid has always wanted to be a race car driver. This gets some of that out.

Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.

All I can say is I look for perpetual conflicts and struggles in this life, and I hope for no other peace, only a cross, while on this side of eternity.

Rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac.

If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.

Complaint is poverty.