I look at the textures, surfaces, colors, and the individual objects in the painting. And then I wonder: what are the relationships among them? Those relationships are everything.

If I keep coming back to a painting and there's a little something that bothers me, I know I'm not going to get away with it. I'm going to have to fix it, change it, whatever it is, to something that I'm comfortable with, that doesn't make me itch when I look at it.

I almost always see what I didn't achieve, to a smaller or greater extent.

Every book is a unique experience.

I've always loved Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. There's this wonderful chapter in which we get a first-person account of the monster's first impressions of the world, being in the woods and taking things in. We're seeing the world as if for the first time. That's just fascinating.

People have their own ideas how about they should appear.

It took me a long time to stop thinking that someone else knew what a great painting was. I was never sure.

You have to learn how to do each book. It's a different world, a different show.

I wanted everybody to see a sunrise and be knocked out by the miracle of it, the world being created every morning.