All art is self-portraiture.

I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire to throw away the old rules.

The backgrounds by design are a very key part of the conversation, because I want a kind of fight or pressure to exist between the figure and the background.

Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation.

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at.

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.

We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

I think that's kind of indicative of a type of self-confidence that people develop when they recognize their own ability to create.

I’ve learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen.

That guys. Sideburns. You like him?"My back squirms. "You've asked me that before.""What I meant was, " he says, flustered. "Your feelings haven't changed? Since you've been

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.

If I can make the movies I want, people are going to watch it how they're going to watch it.

I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy.

We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr.

I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.

When you seek a connection to God, you suffer. God is not absent.

The problem with what we call the 'Arab spring' is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on.