Adolescence is a new birth for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes more rarely portraits.

People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.

Of the billionaires I have known money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

I was a bartender for a long time so I know how to make drinks but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did and why I get to produce more writing than she did and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.