Emotions are the key to many aspects of life. They are precisely the elements that make human beings human. I think the fact that emotions have been reduced and put off to the side in intellectual work, particularly in the 20th Century, is tragic.
There's so much more to life than that, though I think that acting is fascinating because you can forget your own sorrow as you act and become somebody else.
I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of life that was possible. Yeah, it made it kind of harder because the standards were higher, but there was no pressure.
I'm not particularly interested in painting, per se. I'm interested in a painting that has that mysterious life to it. Anything that doesn't partake of that magic is halfway dead - it returns to its physical elements, it's just paint and canvas.
When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.
Politicians are nauseating by definition... They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.
Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.
Doing a story about my mundane, waking life, how much I don't like my job, or breaking up with someone, I don't think so. Those stories don't interest me that much as a general thing.
I never saw anything more like real warfare in my life - only the attack was all on one side. The police, in spite of their numbers, apparently thought they could not cope with the crowd.
Life is very short... but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do.
I love going to conventions, and I love spending time with the fans and going to parts of the world where I wouldn't normally go.
I happen to love engineering. I love figuring things out in a spatial sense, that whole realm of working with mechanical parts, and the relationship of the parts, and things like ratios and the speeds of particular objects.
There's a moment of recognition. It's that white-light kind of stuff that just 'works.' I love that. And you know it when it happens, whether it's a movie, music, a building, a book.
I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them, and I really liked having them around.
And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.
Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.
I love soccer. My father is from Argentina and my mother is from El Salvador. I grew up watching Argentinean soccer. I get really worked up watching soccer. It's in my blood.
He has no talent at all, that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him, please, to give up painting. –--Manet to Monet, on Renoir---
I enjoy sharing my books as I do my friends, asking only that you treat them well and see them safely home.
I think little things are more powerful because they're more honest, so people feel them more strongly.
The designer must understand that form does not follow function nor does form follow a production process. For every use and for every production process there are innumerable equally attractive solutions.
