To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.

Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.

We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting.

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some kind of rhythm.

A world without heroes is only a world with either mere men or men with wit and courage who never had the courage to take steps that could write great and amazing stories of life!

Everything in this world exists to wear you down.

There is no shame in loving: it is the sign of a generous heart, and pain the price of an open soul.

My favorite part of going to a wedding is ruining the wedding.

As long as the body is not in perfect health, you think about it, and that prevents you from thinking of the mind. The sound mind is a sound body.

After this happens again and again, we reach a point were there is nothing but satori, which is what nirvikalpa samadhi is like.

In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns -- Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.

Torture doesn't work.

When all life is seen as divine, everyone grows wings.

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?