What I am seeking... is a motionless movement, something equivalent to what is called the eloquence of silence.

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.

A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it's an exchange of blood, a total embrace - without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.

To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.

I love Indian food - it's my favourite cuisine. I love the mixture of spices and the subtle flavours. It's really erotic the spices are so sensuous.

The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.

I really try to say things as they basically are and it so happens that it is a good message that things are getting better, but there are still problems.

I want to keep playing good golf.

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

I think stand-up comedy is this - it's this kind of indulgence and narcissism.

Are we going to give up, or are we going to be the kind of people who stand up and do what it takes, even if we don't feel like doing it?

I moved to Chicago in 1980 to go to college

The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- converge at the bus stops