Other people's songs can inspire me, though - I always have music on when I'm painting.

I sometimes use music as way of getting back to a certain time, dredging up stuff from the past and putting it down on canvas.

Some of my work is very instinctive, some of my favourite things I've ever done are just two minute sketches, nothing is better when you get it like that so quick, then other work takes months.

I don't really need to be inspired by literature though. At the end of the day it's colour and imagery moved around until it works.

Women really like the horses, more so than men.

Sometimes I just want to sit and write at a clean table and not get paint all over my hands.

Painting can be like poetry but as somebody who creates both I feel the necessity for both so they cant be that similar. Sometimes I think it's as basic as not wanting to get dirty.

The spirit of a painting is very hard to explain and articulate. I can't say it's not intentional because that is the mark I'm trying to hit, however I don't feel I have much control over it.

I used to use a lot of words in the paintings but stopped because it created a narrative - or an answer to a question.

If you can see a world within a portrait I would be happy with that. I don't want to tell the story with a painting, though. I'm trying to get away from the story- from the beginning and the ending.

I have no way of knowing what you are going to feel when you look at one of my paintings; I only know what I feel.

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

Chemistry: that most excellent child of intellect and art.

Obamacare represents a shocking display of political arrogance. It's about time Washington started listening to Americans' common sense voices.

It's a tradition in Islamic society to issue pardons at the end of Ramadan.

The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you.

The beautiful attracts the beautiful.

I shall never be a heretic; I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally; on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men.

What I'm asking for is a new economic order. I don't know how to construct that; I'm not an economist.

Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.

Even though Eve ate the fruit first, God went looking for Adam. It had been Adam whom God had revealed himself to as LORD God in the context of giving Adam divine instruction.