An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it.

One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.

People don't realize we have these built-in seven-league boots. The body can go anywhere. It is physically capable of sustaining almost any kind of abuse, or any dream.

With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn't know who to work with.