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" My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything. "

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" You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture. "

" I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing. "

" I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings. "

" I hate painting. "

" I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself. "

" When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else. "

" I think that words are often extraneous to what I do. "

" I am isolated as an artist, not as a person. "

" I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?' "

" A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy. "

" The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed. "

" A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object. "

" I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period. "

" In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute. "

" I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits. "

" I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient. "

" I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?' "

" I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback. "

" In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like. "

" Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten. "

" I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously. "

" Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers. "

" I think words come between the spectator and the picture. "

" My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms. "