Of the billionaires I have known money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

Men's vows are women's traitors!

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

I found it an interesting portrait of a marriage in exploring notions of how one partner supports the other whilst not jeopardizing the greater good - which is the family.

I was a bartender for a long time so I know how to make drinks but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did and why I get to produce more writing than she did and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

Imagination the traitor of the mind has taken my solitude and slain it.

The moment a person forms a theory his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Good humor isn't a trait of character it is an art which requires practice.

There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

I do portraits. I usually do live models in a class environment but I've been painting at home more. I really love the human form and I love faces. I've tried to do landscapes a few times.

Obama is capable - as evidenced by his first-term success with health care reform. But mandate-building requires humility a trait not easily associated with him.

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy then you are denying the happiness of the here and now.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.