I consider myself lucky to have had wonderful teachers. They expose you to a lot and basically teach you how to paint. I think of my career as a series of lucky incidents.

I love the healthy exchange of information.

I'm much more concerned about what artists think. But as you get older you tend to get much more isolated; you're not out in the bar, having long drunken arguments on the benefits of your work vs. someone else's. It's hard to know how people are looking at it, and you don't get much feedback. The written critical stuff seems to be the feedback, but that's hard to interpret.

I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.

The possibilities of thought training are infinite, its consequences eternal, and yet few take the pains to direct their thinking into channels that will do them good, but instead leave all to chance.

I love the idea of hitchhiking into the city. It was bizarre.

I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us.