I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.

I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Aesthetics is for the artists as ornithology is for the birds.

With Millais's paintings, it's microscopic; when he does hair, it's extraordinary: you can see every strand.