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I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.

I am a Soviet man, and Yeltsin is a Soviet man - maybe our grandchildren will be different.

The first time I walked by a crap table, I felt kind of funny.

If we talk about the glass being half empty or half full, I want to know what does the glass look like from underneath the table?

In big battle scenes, like 'King Arthur', you see the knights in all their fine armour, but they're not in the thick of it: follow the perspective, and you'll find some poor little sod, who didn't want to be there, anyway, with his head split.

With me, everything's right on the table.

The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.

Poor, darling fellow - he died of food. He was killed by the dinner table.

To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination.