One fine day as my mother was putting the bread in the oven, I went up to her and taking her by her flour-smeared elbow I said to her, "Mama I want to be a painter."

Work isn't to make money; you work to justify life.

There are various names for god- Allah, Almighty, Jesus and hundreds of other names but the one I like the most is 'mother'.

A praying mother is more precious and valuable than all the riches in the world.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass"; "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys";