My teachers always said, "You're very talented, but don't set your heart on art. You're only a girl." I was inspired by Virginia Woolf in 1960, but they wouldn't let me write about her. They said she was a trivializer. I also wanted to do a paper on Simone de Beauvoir, and my philosophy teacher said, "Why would you write about the mistress? Write about the master." That was Sartre.

How do we get utopian thinking in a dystopian world? These days we aren't talking to each other - we're screaming and trying to hit each other over the head with rocks and sticks. A primitive fury has been unleashed by a president who has no culture, who cannot read, and who wants to determine power and aggression.

It's a very difficult age when the forces of time want to destroy us and take us away. They're just snatching people like devils; death comes and grabs each of us.

I don't even like the word 'relax'! If I have a partner and we make love a lot, then I'm in a very pure state of being.

I'm used to working with neglect and misunderstanding, so this has been really challenging. It's a different psychic realm. The Lion did not land easily here.

The way I understand composition and form and my ability to enter into material all comes from my disciplines and my commitment as a painter - my energy, my arm, my eyes, my sense of space and form and time. It's a wonderful realm for me. I never leave it.

I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.