I was 18 when I first visited London, I'm very provincial like that, but I must confess the moment I got to America I thought: This is the place. It was more open, with 24-hour cities and pubs and restaurants that didn't close.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

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

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

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.