Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.

Once I was beset by anxiety but I pushed the fear away by studying the sky, determining when the moon would come out and where the sun would appear in the morning.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

Don't get the green disease of envy. Don't be fooled by success and money. Don't let anything come between you and your work.

Artists have to be useful. They have to fill a role.