In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

My first black-on-black picture was 'The Portrait of an Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self.' I started using it as an emblem of this undercurrent of wickedness, malevolence, and irony - all of that.

Your library is your portrait.

The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.

An 'Ordinary Woman' is the beautiful and achingly poignant portrait of Gwen, a complex and troubled woman in her middle years.

'Lean on Pete' is the story of a boy and his horse, but it is never heart-warming - it ranges in tone from desperate to merely painful - and, while fascinating, it is never entertaining or redemptive. But if you want an unadorned portrait of American life (at least in some places) at the beginning of the 21st century, this is the book for you.

I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.

I have a portrait of Saint Thomas More in my office.

Your library is your portrait.

Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me.

Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house.

When FDR died in 1945, he was still paralyzed from the waist down. After he died, his portrait was put on the dime. Through his illness, he went out of his way to minimize his difficulties. Of the thousands of pictures taken of him, only two show him in a leg brace or a wheelchair.

Just in the last week of his life, you could have seen him at Walgreens or at the Electric Fetus, where he often shopped for records - an astonishing sight, like the Mona Lisa taking in her own portrait at the Louvre. Prince, paradoxically, was reclusive but always around.

I used to try to draw my girlfriends. I think one of the most romantic things that anybody can do is draw a portrait of the person you love.

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

For years, I've had a hankering for the portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis. Franklin is credited with so many inventions: the postal system, lightning rods, the constitution. He was a rock star before there was such a thing.

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks.

The photograph of the Queen sitting stiffly across the table from Glasgow resident Susan McCarron is so natural and expressive that it looks utterly fake. It looks like an artist's portrait, complete with symbolism, humour and poignancy. No wonder the palace and the press have interpreted it in such different ways.

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

To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish.