“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”

This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.

As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances.

What any true painting touches is an absence – an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.

Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.

Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.

Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].

The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual.

What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps.

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

My brain is like a cross between a colander and a Lazy Susan – thin, slow, and it leaks.