“I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.”

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don’t know what to say about what I paint, really.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

The best way to begin is to say: ‘Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings’.

If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of…kitsch.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

I refuse to confide and don’t like it when people write about art.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

Looking so cool, his greed is hard to conceal, he’s fresh out of law school.

You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The ‘anything whatever’ then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.

I went into a restaurant one night and ordered lobster, and the waiter brought me one with a claw missing.

My ministry’s always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order.

I just released an op-ed in the “Washington Post” that talks about providing an I.D. so that everyone can have an I.D., primarily, the social security card.

All concluded that Russia did in fact interfere in the 2016 election in order to, quote, help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.

It labels us, affords us kudos, and raises our profile in the “pecking order” of our fellow troglodytes. It says to others, “See, I’ve done so well that I can afford to do nothing at all whenever I so choose!