What I do feel is that 'Up in the Air' is the most indicative film of 2009. It is the portrait of 2009.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.

There are a lot of recurring themes that I resonated with when I read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.'

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.

At the unveiling at the White House of the presidential portrait, President Bush pointed out that Hillary Clinton was the first sitting Senator in history to have her portrait hanging in the White House.

My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.

It is done... the precious portrait placed in the hands of the gentlemen for safe keeping.

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a portrait painter. As I got to be older, I realized that as a portrait painter I wouldn't be able to support a goldfish.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

When you don't have access to a subject, and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events. Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband.

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.