Ocean is more ancient than the mountains and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

Beauty is the disinterested one without which the ancient world refused to understand itself a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world a world of interests leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3 000 years.

I like things that are kind of eclectic when one thing doesn't go with another. That's why I love Rome. The town itself is that way. It's where Fascist architecture meets classic Renaissance where the ancient bangs up against the contemporary. It has a touch of everything. That's my style and that's what my work is about.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture their amphitheaters for wild beasts to fight in.

These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears close our eyes and blindly follow the most narrow conservative tenets of religion or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual.

I was born in ancient times at the end of the world in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.