Inspiration is for amateurs. professionals work everyday. Personally the best inspiration is a deadline.

Every child should have a chance to feel special.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from.

After a few days in hospital, I was thinking, Oh, gee - I raised in a church, Protestant upbringing which I'd rejected as an adult - I'm lying in bed thinking, Hmmm, maybe I ought to pray. They always say there are no atheists in a foxhole... and I thought, Here I am in a pretty good-sized foxhole... and I thought Naahhh. I wouldn't respect any God who would listen to me after I'd rejected him so vociferously.

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both.

Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.