I didn't go to the North Pole to do something about my mother. I was invited to the North Pole and I realized it was impossible to go there without thinking about her.

Art is a way of taking distance. The pathological or therapeutic aspects exist, but just as catalysts.

Objects always meet your obsession. Once you have an obsession, you step on it at every corner.

I try every time for a project to have a natural ending. As much as I can, I try to follow the story and to give it its own end.

At my age, I know myself. If I make a project, it's a way to help me. I don't do it for therapeutic reasons, but I know that the therapy can be a side profit.

In April 1981, at my request, my mother went to a detective agency. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities, and to provide photographic evidence of my existence.

I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.

I know how I live my life. I have a little magnet brain that attracts the kind of things that obsess me.

I made three works about men in my life. But I had much more than three men. I never wrote about them.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

You can pray and fight at the same time, Corporal. Especially if you learn how before things get rough. It’s important to have a philosophy of life . . . and of death.

The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art, and science follow, one and all, this aim.

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder.

Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites.

I've never had a cup of coffee in my life. I can't even remain in the same room with coffee.

I think she [Hillary Clinton] would be far superior to President [Barack] Obama, who is basically remote, aloof and not involved with - he doesn't deal with members of Congress.