When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim.

Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.

We love out of compassion, passion or a sense of commitment.

Wiggy & I were drug buddies. There is no tighter compact for friendship. There is no greater potential for deceit.

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

The oil lobby, perhaps the most powerful lobby on earth, is almost matched by hospital owners and doctors.

I think it's one of my favourite theatres ever, so quirky and wonderful and steeped in history. The space is wonderful and the acoustics are brilliant.

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

Usually when we do something to corrupt our lives, it's usually something to fulfill an ache that we have.

You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway.

The professional will not tolerate disorder... He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.