You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.
Within one hour of touching the brush to canvas for the first time, my students have a total, complete painting.
I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.
You can do anything your heart can imagine.
It's so important to do something every day that will make you happy
Never think about the mistakes you made. Think about the mistakes you will make.
wash the brush, just beats the devil out of it
This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint full as well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can learn disease! Comment to Hans Sloane on Robert Boyle's letter of introduction describing Sloane as a 'ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist'.
I related to his disillusionment. Thinking that he was going for this big dream. Then he kind of saw through it all at one point and went back home. Then he started a bender, which I can relate to of course.
In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.
I can't define myself as a political writer - I don't think I've earned it, and I don't function as a political writer in the way that many of the writers I admire do. It's not simply a question of context, of where I'm writing from - there is much in American society that urgently needs to be written about. I think your work is always engaged with politics in the looser sense of the word - and that looseness is itself a kind of privilege - because politics and culture are evidently intertwined.