I drew laughing, high-breasted girls aquaplaning without a care in the world, as a result of being amply protected against such national evils as bleeding gums, facial blemishes, unsightly hairs, and faulty or inadequate life insurance. I drew housewives who, until they reached for the right soap flakes, laid themselves wide open to straggly hair, poor posture, unruly children, disaffected husbands, rough (but slender) hands, untidy (but enormous) kitchens.

That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people...Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.