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

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.

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.

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.

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

I never think that anything I do is courageous.

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