“.. on my travels, for example, abroad,.. I see things that attract me, in the works of others, - which impress me. That's what you reflect upon at times. And when you come home you think: Me too have to make something like that... Then you start, and when it's finished it looks like the work of that person or another... But your own originality doesn't get lost, - your sentiment remains!.. And this happens not only to me, - this happens to others also... Unintentionally you continue to build on motives of others..”

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”

“You say it's all in my head
And the things I think just don't make sense
So where you been then? Don't go all coy
Don't turn it round on me like it's my fault
See I can see that look in your eyes
The one that shoots me each and every time.
You grace me with your cold shoulder
Whenever you look at me I wish I was her.
You shower me with words made of knives
Whenever you look at me I wish I was her.”

“These things [cutting, cropping and shaping] always happen in strange ways. You can say after the fact what you're doing, but, believe me, you can't project it ahead. It has to be worked through before you can recognize what it was that you were looking for. It's a search; it's not like getting a brainstorm... It's work, yes; it comes out of the practice of painting, the practice of your art.”

“A tongue like yours should be burned and branded
So I can see you lie to me
I wish the air would color red when you breathed it
Oh, so I could've seen it coming
Look in my eyes when you say you love me
So I can see you lie to me”

“How you see me? Tell me how you see me. When mirrors only reflect what you want to see. Believe me.”

“Next time you think of me like that, say my name when you come. It'll get you off even better.”

“And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.”

“How can you tell? That I like books, I mean.

The look on your face when you walked in, somehow I doubted you were that impressed by me.”

“Showing poverty is such a large part of my work because another thing that I am finding is that for me personally, doing this work helps me in trying to come to grips with my own upbringing and all that occurred during that time. Basically, this work to me is a sort of time for reflection, a pseudo inventory of "this is your life," a way to try to accept the concept of what was so inevitable.”