Luc Tuymans quotes:

Painted time is a different zone. This is why I don't believe that a painting - although I've been accused of it many times now - can be truly topical. A painting's physicality gives it a different persistence and a different perception.

It is not important to convince people; they should convince themselves, they should look with their own eyes.

An artwork should point in more than one direction, not be this sort of placating, self-demonstrating, witnessing element.

Every painting has a weakness and a breaking point, where the essence of a painting lies. In my case it is never in the centre.

If you ask people to remember a painting and a photograph, their description of the photograph is far more accurate than that of the painting. Strangely enough, there is a physical element intertwined with the painting. It shakes loose an emotional element within the viewer.

All art is failure. How one fails is a different matter.

Life is politics, basically, but you don't just go to a gallery and put the words 'art' and 'politics' on the wall.

When critics or art historians or curators ask me why I still paint, the answer is that I am not naive.

When I start to paint, it is real agony. I get nervous. The day before, I am already working up to it. Then I get to the studio and, once the image starts to emerge and come together, pleasure kicks in. And then you can see things that no other person can see.

When you feel concentrated within the intensity of making paintings, you know exactly what you are doing.