While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.

There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting.

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.

The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

I've not been cursed with talent, which could be a great inhibitor.

An empty canvas is full.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting.

Love is not a verb. Love is a noun. Love’s activity is people breathing, cells dividing, a dove taking a flight. This grammar of life not all can see.

Hell is a conspiracy, and the first requirement of a conspiracy is that it remain underground.

Life is about juggling obligations, Valerie. You need to study smarter, not harder.

Honestly, for an evil god of darkness, he certainly can be dull.

The bottom line is we must get off our duff and make an effort to succeed. Trust me on this, when you see someone successful in any of the arts they have been willing to make an extra effort.

Government has got to invest more money in our NHS. The people who work in it are heroic. They do an amazing job.

To be good and to do good-that is the whole of religion.

I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time.

Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltiness of time.