Whenever I got a new studio I made the largest possible painting, and since the ceiling was low, the painting became horizontal. As I changed studios and got larger spaces, I made bigger paintings.

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by.

I'm always trying to do things that no one has ever seen before.

I tell young people that the greatest paintings in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil smeared on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's ear. It's that simple.

I was probably born with the ability to draw, but that does not make you an artist.

In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself.

If you are close to it, a big painting is just a feeling around you, that's all.

It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means.

I went to the University of Minnesota, and I met this amazing artist named Cameron Boothe there who was in World War I, who studied with Hans Hoffman in Munich.

Don’t fear criticism

One of the main keys of discovering your gift is question

Promise me Deewan bhai, you will not let Safeena become another Bilal.

Death is buried there into death Hunger strikes on its own last breathNo spine to shiver, no heart talks At life’s craving poverty mocksFrom the poem 'Exhumation

My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I'm perpetually surprised, but there's nothing wrong with me that I can fix.

Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.

The mind is like a lake lashed into waves. Make the water of the lake clear and calm.

In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

My advice to teens is to try and do something that scares you every day because it's the only way you can test how far you can really go.