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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

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

I hate painting.

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

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?'

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

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

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

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

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