I think that cultural influence is very deep, it is not on the surface and this is true in every culture.

'Understanding' art is like having a sense of humour - if you don't have one, no amount of explanation is going to make you laugh.

I thought the objects we value least because they were ubiquitous were actually the most extraordinary.

I try to make images that have the immediate presence we take for granted in objects - a chair, a shoe, a book, a Judd - and compose them like sentences.

You can see in my paintings, I've taken away the context, I've taken away the shadows, I've taken away expression, I've taken away the personal, and yet so much remains!

The art world, of all worlds, has room for everyone.

I am trying to present objects in the simplest way possible, and I don't want to supply too much context.

Whatever happens to the art world, art will go on regardless. As for obscurity, it looms just over the horizon beckoning us all. Why worry.

I think the best approach is not to be too much like the thing that they are referring to, see it as a guide.

Art is more to do with observation than invention.

If things are too similar, the dialogue is not very interesting. If you put in contrast, big and small, abstract and representational, you set up the possibility of a discourse.

As the sun rose I could see Etna, a truncated cone with a plume of smoke over it like the quill of a pen stuck in a pewter inkpot, rising out of the haze to the north of where I was treading water.

I felt so skinless at times! Things hit me so hard!

Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'.

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.

In and out of government, I've always been willing to take on complicated, sometimes unpopular, issues and work them through to have a solution.

I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West.

I may be boring, but it would be to wake up by my dog and then my daughter.

I've never seen a truly great fighter get knocked onto the ropes unconscious... knocked out cold before... and I saw Roy Jones get knocked out twice in a row.

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social.

Play is the taproot from which original art springs. It is the raw stuff that the artist channels with all his learning and technique.