A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely.

No one should do a job he can do in his sleep.

Engage your life with enthusiasm; grasp your life aggressively and squeeze from it every drop of excitement, satisfaction, and joy.

Painters love paint itself: so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to.

It is impossible to be a true soldier of Jesus Christ and not fight.

Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don't say anything and you don't know they know who you are.

Of course you don't make any noise in space, because there's no air.

My God is a God who wants me to have things. He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block.

Dreamers can't be tamed.

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five blocks. That is not Mexico; that is some crude Americanism you have absorbed.