I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little piece perfect.

It's like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I'd never seen before.

Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever.

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

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.