If you put Willem Dafoe, Liam Neeson and James Woods in a room together, there wouldn't be room for anyone else.
In a painting, what counts is the unexpected.
Truth exists; only lies are invented.
To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm. . . If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.
I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness. . I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact.
Kitsch is all that the modern world makes that's not modern, which is most of it.
Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon.
I always wanted to be loved.
It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.