Every young man's heart is a graveyard in which are inscribed the names of a thousand dead artists but whose only actual denizens are a few mighty, often antagonistic, ghosts.
I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.
A lot of the people I'd love to work with, like John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, aren't alive, unfortunately.
if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?
Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.
Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.
In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries.
Professionally, what comes first is representing the artist.Whether they're alive or dead.
