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

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.

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

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

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

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

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.