Some people must go to extremes to get the world in balance for themselves. Some can't bear bright lights, so wherever they go they search for the dark; they turn the lights down, anything to sustain some level of comfort.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

I think people have problems sometimes when things are too general. In fact, they are not really general at all.

Sometimes I'll dream that I saw a show and then I'll wake up in the morning and realize that I didn't see the show, that it was my dream. And I just remember what the paintings look like in the dream and I think, "Oh, nobody painted those. I can do that."

You can't have a good bullfight without a good bull.

I think style is a fringe benefit that looks like you made it.

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.