It wouldn't be right for me to clown around when I'm painting a president.

The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.

The story is the first thing and the last thing.

It wouldn't be right for me to clown around when I'm painting a president.

I'm still about as pigeon-toed as you can get. But I learned to manage pretty well on a bike. Should have had a bicycle then, when I was a kid, but our family didn't have the money for such luxuries. I saved up to buy one myself a few years later.

If there was sadness in this creative world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems.

I didn't know what to expect from a famous movie star; maybe that he'd be sort of stuck-up, you know. But not Gary Cooper. He horsed around so much... that I had a hard time painting him.