I'm very interested in how we read things, especially the link between seeing two-dimensional and three-dimensional images, because of how I read.

The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites.

I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.

You can give the same recipe to ten cooks, and some make it come alive, and some make a flat souffle. A system doesn't guarantee anything.

I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.