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

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

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.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

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.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldnt be able to say anything.