Chuck Close

I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.

There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also an unbelievably high proportion of artists who are left-handed, and a high correlation between left-handedness and learning disabilities.

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.

I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing.

The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.

Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.

Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.

In the 7th grade, I made a 20-foot long mural of the Lewis and Clark Trail while we were studying that in history because I knew I wasn't going to be able to spit back the names and the dates and all that stuff on a test.

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless.