I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

I hate painting.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

Wonder Woman is lame. She flies around in an invisible jet, but she's not invisible. I don't get it.

I have no problem getting financing. I have a problem catching ideas that I fall in love with for the next feature.

Seeing things from a different point of view can help us understand why other people act the way they do. We too often judge people without having all the facts.

There will always be places in the world where good schools don't exist and good teachers don't want to go, not just in the developing world but in places of socioeconomic hardship.

Unplanned pregnancy is an equal-opportunity affliction.

The mind is responsible for the feelings of pleasure and pain. Control of the mind is the highest Yoga.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.

I am a bit biased. I co-chair the campaign effort of George W. Bush.

From the first moment that I can remember, I had identified myself as a bass player and it had everything to do with my father, who was a bass player. And he loved music, you know, as much as anybody I've ever seen. And that dynamic I just thought as somehow was a straight pass to me.

If some guys couldn't stand the heat, then they didn't belong in the major leagues. I don't know anybody who refused the World Series checks I helped them get.

It's the hardest thing in the world to dedicate to writing, but if you do that even once a week, after six months or a year you'll have something substantial.

Rock n' roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands, and that for me suggests brotherhood, family, friendship and community.

To the socialist no nation is free whose national existence is based upon the enslavement of another people, for to him colonial peoples, too, are peoples, and, as such, parts of the national state.

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

When you're a kid, you see your parents reading the newspaper and you're like, 'God, why are they reading the newspaper?' When you're young, you're not reading the newspaper. But there comes a time in your life when the newspaper's cool.

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us.

The most important thing is to be healthy, to drink a lot of water, to fight gravity as much as possible. I am one of the few people who decided I wasn't going to do any invasion with my face.

I love to watch someone who just goes for it and isn't worried about whether it's silly or awkward or unflattering.

Conservation is key to preserving many of the worlds natural beauty spots so do your best to help by keeping to designated footpaths and being a discerning souvenir collector.

When I go to M Bar there's all kinds of agents there, looking for people who doing good stuff.

Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's level of aspiration and expectation.

It is tough that a lot of kids have single-family homes.