You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.

No small dabs of colour - you want plenty of paint to paint with.

I do not judge, I only chronicle.

An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture is finished.

A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it.

Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire.

If you begin with the middle-tone and work up from it toward the darks so that you deal last with your highest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents.

Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents.

A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.

Take no stock in saying, "never", because it carries no guarantee.

Do the work in your unique style.

Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.

My principal focus is finding great dramas.

In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

You see new shows coming out with the same format, slightly high end, a little bit more glossy. You think, "S - . It's just the same s - but different day."

The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had.

I love to work with Julia [Holter] because our voices have a similar timbre, and she's very unique. She finds very avant-garde harmonies that I adore.

Consider yourself lucky for having met him, for he's the kind of man who'll prove you right.

I think it's always good when you're able to, as an actor, allow your work to be some kind of a conduit for social discourse, and an examination of where we are, as a society.