The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

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.

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.

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.

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

My mother was a first-grade teacher, so I credit her with this lifelong intellectual curiosity I have, and love of reading and learning.

Reform is Chinas second revolution.

You have seen on TV how hard it is to go up 129,000 feet and how hard it is to come down.

As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.

I have no interest at all in food and drink, but only in slaughter and blood and the agonized groans of mangled men

If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would've been like Woodstock.

Andrew Wood's death changed things for a few weeks. I probably got even heavier into drugs after that.

I relate to hustlers who want to get out of where they are and create something different for themselves.

The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever.

Be a good listener...It makes the person who's speaking to you feel loved,cared for and worthy of being heard.