There's poetry in the world. Poetry doesn't belong just to the poets. You know, you can look at the most premeditated, cold blooded movie and find poetry in it.

Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

Fashion is the pursuit of perfection, Style is the acceptance of one's flaws.

My portraits are half what I see and the other half is invented or dictated by the person and the painting.

I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.

I repeatedly refuse to make any practical decisions. I get a feeling of nausea about practicality.

When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one?

It is very scary to think mechanically about someone you know. That means that the second time you meet a person is useless. Which I tend to believe anyway.

When I look at a drawing of a person, I look at that person as living.

To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

I don't seek power and do not run around

I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

President Obama's made the White House really the people's house. People feel like they're welcome.

True sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.

People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz.

Baptists are very strong believers that the civil magistrate is ordained by God to punish those who do evil.

You are your own superstar, and only you can shape the movie that you make.

But evil is a cunning force. It can find the weakness in any man, even the bravest. [...] It only takes a single weak moment to let evil in.