I can easily ignore my detractors and feel the people who respond favorably.

Imagination comes of not having things.

I have always said to young artists that scholastic training and the studying of art history are crucial to fully developing as an artist.

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis.

I always stayed in tune with my own ambitions and attitudes and I'm still my intractable old self, for better or worse.

I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work.

The people who love my paintings, that respond to them the most, they're spectators, they're not viewers.