Interesting is when one can produce a picture that is pretty, but with undercurrents. The metaphor that comes to mind is in the poems of Robert Frost.

Painting to me is constant searching. I can see what I want, but I can't get there, and yet you have to be open enough that if it goes another way, then let it go that way.

Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline.

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.

My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker... I've gotten into some curious situations.

The danger, I find, is that you can become too formulaic, like some commissioned portrait painters who develop a methodology.

I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.

The real kiss of death - particularly with my father - is the extraordinary popularity of his work.

I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.

And what does it mean to take care of power? Do you use it? Conserve it? Keep it out of the wrong hands?

Imagine how free we would feel and what we could accomplish if we could live without fear.

To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it, for later use.

Fear has no place in the lives of those who choose to be victorious.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

It hinges on oil. Europeans feel they handled the boycott after the Yom Kippur War [1973] very badly. The Arabs need to sell oil; otherwise they cannot live.

There's incredible effect in being either loved or hated, but knowing that, either way, you have penetrated the mind and have altered it; that is a very pleasurable feeling.

But I like to think an athlete is an athlete.

[Donald Trump] is not cool and therefore they're very proudly pointing out that none of them are gonna perform at his inauguration.