If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.