I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don't want to loose it. With the abstract drawings, when I'm feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.

Real people move, they bear with them the element of time. It is this fourth dimension of people that I try to capture in a photograph.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light.

When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.