I've been writing poems and stories since I was about 13.
You really need faith in yourself to make art and to stand up for what you believe in.
The faces people make when they are photographed and the face they have when you draw them are very different.
I like the really human sides of people. To meet them and see that theyre complicated and weird or shy or any of those things sort of makes it even better to know that they can rise above that and make something great.
That's what it's all about - making art is making something live forever. Human beings especially - we can't hold on to them in any way. Painting and art is a way of holding onto things and making things go on through time.
Romanticism is not just about being in a fixed state of endless beauty, because you can't live like that or live on that, that's what I've learnt.
To paint well, I need to be enraptured by my subjects.
Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.
Sometimes it seems to me that things hold together only thanks to the borders, that the true identify of these lands and peoples is the shape of their territories in an atlas. It's a stupid thought, but I can't shake it.
The mind has powers that allow us to go beyond our normal or habitual way of being, and beyond what we think is possible.
The antidote to hatred in the heart, the source of violence, is tolerance.