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

I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick.

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

My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other.

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole.

Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.

I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.