A lot of my work involves instilling objects with the power of touch - a transference of soul, spirit, energy through actions.
Now celebrity has taken on a holy status all of its own, and we look to the stars to provide us with the transcendental experience that was once achieved through religion.
And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.
In Las Vegas, the magnitude is impressive, but the humanity is gone. It feels like you're being intimidated out of your money instead of inviting you to come have this experience.
There are aspects of Asian culture in my work, but it's really rooted in an American experience - transcendentalism, '60s counterculture, punk rock.
My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.
You entertain people who are satisfied. Hungry people can't be entertained - or people who are afraid. You can't entertain a man who has no food.
There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura.
If you are bitter, you are like a dry leaf that you can just squash, and you can get blown away by the wind. There is much more wisdom in forgiveness.
My teacher said my brain was the size of a pea. He made my life miserable by singling me out in the classroom as a failure.
I spend so much of my time working away, but I love being here. My family is in Somerset, and this is where my heart is.
Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end.
I really worked with icons in the music business, which really had a strong effect on me. It wasn't just pick-up gigs.
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.
When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.
Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness, I think, only exists when you're a child and once you go past 11, unfortunately it's gone.
Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness.
Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
My work since the late '80s specifically questioned what was presented as the 'natural' order of things in the history of post-war-N.Y. painting.
I can't work completely out of my imagination. I must put my foot in a bit of truth; and then I can fly free.
It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.
