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.

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.

Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

I know, I know, I'm being a girl.

I don't trade my vote for money.

There are so many things that kept forcing metal back down to the underground. It survives everywhere on the planet.

The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council.

Long live the Unity of Latin America.

There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.

Nobody's bought this land. And no one's going to want it either. It's dying land, lonely land." "Like me, then," I said. "Yes, like you." You chewed the corner of your lip. "You both need saving.

The past is only the future with the lights on

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.