I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

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

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

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.

Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.

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

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.