The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

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

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.

The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.