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

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.

To experience the unique sense of elation that you have when your child is sleeping on your chest in an incomparable emotion.

We all wake up, and I'm sure at some point during the day we all have very similar thoughts regardless of our circumstances and where we are in the world.

I can only hope that my future movies will do well.

If you haven't read 'In The Morning I'll Be Gone', I reckon it's a pretty good place to start if you're new to me and my books.

In terms of writing about horses, I fell backwards into that. I was intent on getting a Ph.D., becoming a professor, and writing on history but I got sick 14 years ago when I was 19. Getting sick derailed that plan completely.

I have a very addictive personality, so I'm even careful about wanting more of anything than I need - even chocolate.

I only socialise with people that I have a lot in common with.

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.

You can make a difference, and you can make it now. You can make a difference, in your own life, in your family, your community, your world.

Look, I've got incredible pride for my family. I've absolutely fallen into that cliche of a dad who could just happily talk about my daughter endlessly.

Micro managing anything is not a great role for government.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

We sometimes get so caught up in one or another aspect of the teaching, we forget that if a person hasn't been introduced to Christ, if a person hasn't embraced the risen Lord and the church that's an expression of that experience, what we're saying just sounds like a bunch of rules or negative statements limiting their personal freedom.

I prefer to believe it's my responsibility if a film of mine works or doesn't work.

I go to eat dinner with my folks when I'm home. I think that's the trick.

Wiffle ball was my first experience hitting left-handed.

Because of lower life expectancy in Scotland - something that we are working hard to improve - the average woman will get £11,000 less in pension payments than counterparts in the rest of the U.K., even though she will pay exactly the same in contributions.

The truth is, if anyone saw my home life, I'm pretty sure it would look like other families' around the world. There's a lot of juggling to be done.

The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.

Somebody said, 'You may be a committee chair.' I don't think so. I don't think anybody would want me that much.

This idea of the transcendent power of the Supreme Being is essentially connected with that by which the whole duty of man is summed up: obedience to His will.

And once you get instantaneous communication with everybody, you have economic activity that's far more advanced, far more liquid, far more distributed than ever before.