I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.