I'm very much involved with Asian art and its theory and practice, mainly Chinese because that was quite sophisticated. I tend to look at that more than I look the Western.

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.

When you're using a long brush, you have your arm at full length. Basically, it exaggerates the movement of your body. But I always start far away and end up really close.

A painting, you know, it's all dirty material. But it's about transformation. Taking that earth, that heavy earthen kind of thing, turning it into air and light.

Holding together a kind of tension. When you see a painting that's really good that's what it's doing.

A work of art is a renewable source of energy.

I'm an abstract painter not just for myself, but because I really believe in abstraction.

Painters are amongst the priests - worker priests of the cult of man - searching to understand but never know.

I've always worn a hat when I work. I think it also comes from a picture of Rothko I saw with a painter's hat on.

I don't remember any dream. All I remember is waking up and feeling that there had been a change while I was sleeping.

When you're not smoking anymore, you don't have to carry around a pack of cigarettes, a lighter - all this paraphernalia. So you're liberated in a certain sense. It's the same with drinking.

He's an undersized pissant with delusions of adequacy.

... isn't breaking a supervillian out of jail a little ... much?

Doubt not your purpose nor your strength.

Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down but the staying down.

Nora: This is crazy. Patch: I'm crazy. About you.

Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.

Simplify, then add lightness.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

Genius and great abilities are often wanting; sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done; others for what they would have done.

There are some writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these.