“When Eddie B. dared me to walk the net bridge over the Elijah Hatchett River where we'd seen an alligator and another kid got bit by a coral snake, I wasn't scared--I just didn't feel like doing it right then.”

“King of the Ruskin was my show last year, last May, in New College Long Room. I filled that old room with seven big paintings. Big, colourful paintings. King of the Ruskin included better work than Abstractionism. I’ve tried since to paint like that and I can’t. The King of the Ruskin paintings were it. I didn’t realise it at the time but they were the best paintings I would ever make. They were the paintings I wanted to see and they did everything I wanted painting to do at that time. So these are my last paintings. I will never paint again. But why didn’t I stop in the first place? No one ever knows when to stop. They just decline. For me, I had to kill my painting. With King of the Ruskin I had delivered the mortal wounds but one rarely has the pleasure of a quick and graceful exit. No, it has been slow, painful and distressing. Of course I am speaking in hindsight; I only realised it was the end with the randomly themed, scrappy, clustered paintings where it finally became apparent to me that I had no skills, no ideas, no interest, no pride and no pleasure in painting. I was like a dying cowboy, making a final, feeble bid at victory with random, aimless shots at an invisible enemy.”

“I slept a lot. Which I liked, because being unconscious meant not remembering.”

“Despite my fears, tears of joy streamed down my face as I held my precious baby boy in my arms for the first time and thought “What did I ever do without him?” I loved him so much. He was perfect.”

“In the Catskills, nostalgia runs backwards. The upwardly mobile Jewish masses of the 1950s and 1960s have been replaced by the Jews of 19th century Poland.”

“While I was growing up, I was mostly compliant and easy going. But sometimes I could be a little rascal.”

“I walked across a bridge that doesn't exist. And after that, being scared just didn't seem so important anymore.”