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

I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money – I think that can be a burden – I’m greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. On the other hand, I can find excitement, I admit, in raindrops falling on a puddle and a lot of people wouldn’t. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over.

You can't believe any picture nowadays, if it's digital. You can't really believe. If you see me shaking hands with Mr. [Barack] Obama, it doesn't mean I ever met him, does it?

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.