For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that [before his trip to India, circa 1975] I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'.. .I could never see these qualities in paint - I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.

You wait until life is in the frame, then you have the permission to click. I like the adventure of waiting until the whole frame is full.

I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended

An empty canvas is full.

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable

While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.