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

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.

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.

Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.

On the day after Christmas, some store or another will always take out and ad saying there are only 364 shopping days to Christmas. No one is amused.

Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was but it does not matter it does not affect one's faith.

You have to be positive, and I'm not just talking about athletics, this also applies to life.

Color is very much about atmosphere and emotion and the feel of a place.

I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.

Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.

Conservatism's not the answer. The Republican Party has to reach out, moderate and modify its views to be able to accommodate radical Democrats, minorities, and so forth.

I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something.

The felt presence of immediate experience-- this is all you know. Everything else comes as unconfirmed rumor.

The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's.