To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species..

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms..

My pictures really finish themselves..

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldnt be able to say anything..

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object..

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like ….

I dont think you can lightly paint a picture. Its an activity I take very seriously..

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid..

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them..

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else..

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings..

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute..

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits..

It takes a long time for the gleam in the eye to turn into something solid..

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers..

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed..

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy..

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period..

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient..

I think words come between the spectator and the picture..

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture..