For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

My painting is not violent, it's life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death.

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.