I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone because I am the person I know best.

There's a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say oh God I've got to see my friends 'cause I'm too content being by myself.

I've also seen that great men are often lonely. This is understandable because they have built such high standards for themselves that they often feel alone. But that same loneliness is part of their ability to create.

I do think I feel it but you don't think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don't think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It's been a long fifty years.

In my older age I've learned to take things slower because I used to be that total-fall-in-love-after-a-day guy.

At the age of 11 I was about 6 ft. tall and my voice had completely broken. That caused problems. I was this gangly spotty very unattractive kid. I wasn't cool and I wasn't a nerd. I didn't even want to fit in with anyone.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age and an age is heroic because of what it is not because of what it does.

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it.

You live in a deranged age more deranged that usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.