The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.

There's a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I've got my specialist subject - in the Mastermind sense - and I wouldn't change it, or who I am.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.

Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.

I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more.

He'll be down with the books. My old septon used to say books are dead men talking. Dead men should keep quiet is what I say. No one wants to hear a dead man's yabber.

Big dreams are marathons. Passionate actions are marathons of marathons! Waiters don't deserve it

Your life has a natural motion. Surrendering reveals how flowing this life could be.

Out where the handclasp's a little stronger Out where the smile dwells a little longer That's where the West begins.

Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you?

The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.

People generally express more in between their sentences when they're not speaking. Words are usually there to disguise who someone is or what they're feeling.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it's what he descends to that shames the human race.

It is certainly much easier wholly to decline a passion than to keep it within just bounds and measures; and that which few can moderate almost anybody may prevent.

Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.