My mother thought I would have a hard life as a painter. My father thought the highest thing a person could be was an architect. Below that was a painter. So he thought it was much better than being, say, a doctor.

Most contemporary artists are behind the bubble in time. They're making videos that are so incredibly boring compared to a good movie. Or they're making work where I say, "You realize minimal art is 50 or 60 years old?" That's what I tell people to shock them. They just blanch.

A New York audience generally likes decorative paintings, and decorative paintings go with the couch. If you change the couch, you change the painting. And when you're coming up, and the paintings aren't first-class decoration, you're at a disadvantage for publicity and sales.

You usually want to get something out of a painting other than the ideas that you had in your head.

Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail. I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing . . . Painting is a way of making you see what I saw.

If you know what you're doing, you're doing dull stuff.

Make a painting you can work on for a long period, and make it look like it doesn't show any effort.