Quotes About Observation

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

I paint things as they are. I don't comment.

It's hard for me to find people to paint. There has got to be something about them that only I can see.

I maintain that if you're a novelist and you go into an art museum, you'll come out a better novelist. And if you paint a picture for an hour you're a better actor at the end of it.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

I don't paint, and I can't draw, but I see things, I think, quite well, and I love being able to freeze things with the camera, particularly the children. Then I discovered with the camera that you can tell a whole story with just freezing a moment in reality. I find it a very good way, a very satisfying feeling.

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.

I feel like every piece of art is a mirror of what's going on in the present time, because the artist - a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker - will be affected by what's around them, so it seeps into their work.

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.

If you look at a painting that you love by one of the great masters, every time you go back to it, you see something different - a different attitude or brushstroke. 'Hamlet' is like an entire gallery of old masters.

My paintings and comedy have a lot in common. They are both improvisations based on observation.

When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.

I'm inspired by being in a different town every day - all the people I meet, all the things I see. There's no way of compartmentalizing everything in my head; whatever I'm taking in is coming out in some way. I think I love painting so much because, for me, it's so fast. There's not too much thought in these paintings.

I mostly paint animals I'm familiar with, but I did a series of paintings of ravens, so I read everything about them.

There are some galaxies that not only teach us things but are just gorgeously beautiful to look at. My favorite example is the Antenne, which is a pair of colliding galaxies.

I backpacked around the world and went to places like Mexico City and Pakistan, where I'm like, 'Oh. Things aren't quite as good.'

When I took charge of Pakistan, I stopped and had a look from the outside before making any judgement calls. I got used to the culture because I think that is so important. For you to move a team forward as a coach, you have to understand the culture.

I fought against Palestinians. I saw them.

I have oft-times been besought, by divers gentlemen, to set down on paper what I have beheld through my newly invented microscopia, but I have generally declined.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.