It's still an escape for me, painting, so it also takes me elsewhere. I don't think I would do it otherwise.

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

You cannot just be working in a vast, air-conditioned loft space and think you are going to make a decent painting. Francis Bacon had a special studio built, and he felt completely emasculated in there. I have to be somewhere comfortable.

I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect.

I'm off to save the universe again. It's a tough job but someone has to do it, and I'm glad it's me.

I think it would be shocking for me to pretend not to have any past. And also, it would be a lie.