Focusing isn't just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.

For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.

I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience.

Focusing isn't just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.

An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict.

I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

His failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind.

As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

I think this lack of a center has something to do with the loss of certainties that Christianity had to offer.

It looks easy, like surfing, but surfing is hard too.

You have to determine what you are and send the messages out to people, like, 'Hey, I'm a screenwriter - look at this.' You can't sit around, wondering why people aren't calling and asking about my writing.

You'd think if anyone could charm America into caring about the evening news, it would be Katie Couric, the Tri Delt from Virginia who became America's sweetheart on the 'Today' show. But her ratings have been dismal - she comes in last place every week.

I was having an argument with my stepfather, and he was like, 'Why don't you join the Marine Corps?' And I was like, 'Noooo! Well, maybe, actually... ' I went and saw the recruiter, who was like, 'Are you on the run from the cops? Because we've never had someone want to leave so fast.'

Never wound a snake kill it.

I always say you shouldn't weigh yourself. I don't even have a set of scales in my house.

It has become more acceptable to describe yourself as a conservative, but not everyone who uses that term about themselves really is truly conservative.

Cloud represents the maturation of the IT industry.

Advertising is, actually, a simple phenomenon in terms of economics. It is merely a substitute for a personal sales force - an extension, if you will, of the merchant who cries aloud his wares.

I never practice before, I never work hours on a script. I just choose my characters and trust them, and after that, it's about the director taking your hand.

It's good to do things slow in the bush. It makes you appreciate everything a lot more.

Just do the math. In the next 50 to 75 years, people will be living to be 130 and 140. They'll be working until they're 100. It's incredible.

Today we're dealing with metropolitan Shanghai, metropolitan New Delhi or Paris. If we're competing at that level, our diversity, that richness of people coming from so many different backgrounds, is one of our greatest advantages.

By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.

Maybe because it's entirely an artist's eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools.

Everything I write is based on something I've personally experienced, or things that my friends have experienced that I just find horribly entertaining.

Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.

I am not able of hating. I am not able of hating.

At the end of the day, I'm writing in a genre that isn't highly regarded.

Indecision is the seedling of fear

The meaning of life is not to be discovered only after death in some hidden, mysterious realm; on the contrary, it can be found by eating the succulent fruit of the Tree of Life and by living in the here and now as fully and creatively as we can.

I don't want you to save me I want you to stand by my side as I save myself

I was interested in the nature of human mental processes, which is what got me interested in psychoanalysis. And it became clear to me after a while that mental processes come from the brain, and in order to understand them, you need to be a biologist of the brain.

Cambridge is thriving and Britain is working. We have been telling people - 'if you value it, vote for it' - and this is particularly relevant in Cambridge.