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.

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.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.

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

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.

A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.