I might have some character traits that some might see as innocence or naive. That's because I discovered peace and happiness in my soul. And with this knowledge I also see the beauty of human life.

The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should may and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.

I love prints of skulls and bones and have some taxidermy - a crow and a rabbit - to remind me of home. I like art and have a big portrait of Bjork.

It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946 when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.

Every man's work whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else is always a portrait of himself.

You that would judge me do not judge alone this book or that come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon Ireland's history in their lineaments trace think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone because I am the person I know best.

Elizabeth Peyton the artist known for tiny dazzling portraits of radiant youth is now painting tiny dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.