Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they paint shadows in European art? Shadows are because of optics. Optics need shadows and strong light. Strong light makes the deepest shadows. It took me a few years to realize fully that the art historians didn't grasp that. There are a lot of interesting new things, ideas, pictures.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

You can't name the inventor of the camera. The 19th-century invention was chemical: the fixative.

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

I've always been interested in space in pictures. I think my going deaf increased my spatial sense, because I can't get the direction of sound. I feel that I see space very clearly, and that's because I can't hear it. So it's a compensatory thing.

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.