The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

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.

Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.

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