I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.