The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

All my life I've been hiding.

I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.

I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.

Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.