A trio of reputations lie at the heart of Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady.'

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart.

I first thought about doing a project about Anna Wintour and 'Vogue' when I read an article in 'New York Magazine' about the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball, the annual fundraising gala that Anna oversees. It created such a fascinating portrait that I couldn't help but be compelled.

I would hardly call myself an artist in that sense; I doodle, I draw, I'm not a trained artist, I couldn't sit down and do an accurate portrait of anyone.

There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

A city is like a family portrait - you don't tear it up if you don't like your uncle's nose.

For the surf idol Duke Kahanamoku portrait, which I created for the Surfrider Foundation, I took a photo from a book cover and abstracted the photo image into a drawing. This drawing was laminated onto a surfboard and auctioned to a buyer.

We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.

I got a portrait of Nipsey at my house, bro. I got to put a platinum plaque by that, and my brother is not here to share that with me. That's his first platinum single. We did that together.

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.

A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was.

The dog is the perfect portrait subject. He doesn't pose. He isn't aware of the camera.

In 2007, Donald Trump spent $20,000 that belonged to his charity - the Donald J. Trump Foundation - to buy a six-foot-tall portrait of himself during a fundraiser auction at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.

'The Portrait of Dorian Grey' beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.

What I find really interesting is, whenever you see the person who gives you the portrait of yourself, the portrait seems to be a combination of their face and your face.

I've got a portrait in the Smithsonian. Who ever thought that would happen?

You know, if one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible.

I try to do a lot of asymmetrical, triangular compositions - I find those work really well for comic book covers in that portrait mode, and I don't always see that in other artists.

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