“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.

You want a blood relative to lead your army? Get marcie. She likes ordering people around. She’ll be a natural.

We can enhance democracy by making it in line with its original vision. Read the dollar bill – E pluribus unum, out of many, one; novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. That’s democracy.

When you use an armament, you use it to defend the civilians. You kill terrorists in order to defend civilians. That’s the natural role of any army in the world.

To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.

The public is ready now for a safety net for the middle class, something not just for the poor, but for everyone who will need help, from time to time, in order to own a home, educate their kids, keep themselves healthy or have something to retire on.

Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation.

As an actor, I have casting issues. I’m a minority. I don’t have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I’m not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers.