Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour.
As a younger man, I thought the best thing art could do was to challenge people's mindsets, and I still do, but I've come round to the value of entertainment. A show like 'The Interceptor,' which gives the audience that release, after a hard day, of just sitting down and enjoying themselves - that adds value to lives, too.
I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times.
Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life.
My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they'd go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.
A man is most happy when he is most perfect, and he is most perfect when all his faculties are proportionately and harmoniously developed. Thus developed, nature and art and society supply him with a thousand sources of enjoyment.
I'm very silly as a person, but quality silliness on-screen has more of an art to it. Harrison Ford, whom I was in 'Morning Glory' with, has mastered that dry funny better than anyone.
People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.
In our fast-forward culture, we have lost the art of eating well. Food is often little more than fuel to pour down the hatch while doing other stuff - surfing the Web, driving, walking along the street. Dining al desko is now the norm in many workplaces. All of this speed takes a toll. Obesity, eating disorders and poor nutrition are rife.
The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better.
Art class was my safe haven.
I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.
Tuscany is so full of history and beauty - you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region's homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare.
The method of producing comics in Japan is very hectic, but it's also rewarding because it's possible to do both the story and art all by yourself.
I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living.
Indeed the three prophecies about the death of individual art are, in their different ways, those of Hegel, Marx, and Freud. I don't see any way of getting beyond those prophecies.
Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.
I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us.
