As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does

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.

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

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.

Change is simply a shift of the “Old Way - Chaos - New Way” to do things.

The Dormouse looked out, and he said with a sigh: "I suppose all these people know better than I. It was silly, perhaps, but I did like the view Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).

My senior year I was basically supporting myself, so it was like, Do you want to eat and pay the rent, or do you want to go to school? I wanted to eat and pay the rent.

With all its variety and liveliness, color acts in the work of art as blood does as it circulates through our bodies. Color is what keeps the painting alive and moving.

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?

In terms of having to uphold something, I don't need any added pressure. I need to be free in the work.

I truly believe that I have been given a second chance at life. I never expected the results I have had.