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

I never think that anything I do is courageous.

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

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

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.