The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter

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.

As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does

The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement

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. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

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

A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.