In India and in New York the economy is naked. People are starving physically in India, and emotionally in New York.

Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

When I look at a drawing of a person, I look at that person as living.

I first think of intelligence. You need it for surviving in Italy because Italy is so pompous.

If you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force, or cunning. Like Machiavelli says, "Fronte otra forze." And neither of these two "virtues" is suited to an artist. The artist has to stay intelligent.

When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one?