Chuck Close

If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.

Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.

Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests.

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.