You have to sniff out joy. Keep your nose to the joy trail.

There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"

I sang a song in Hindi; nobody even knew what that was. Singing about Native American issues, nobody did that... I had no reason to want to copy anybody else... All I had was my originality.

Digital art software has empowered both the painterly side of photographers, and the photographer side of painters.

What can government do? They can listen to their own people. But I'll tell you what citizens can do, when we elect one of these people - whether we think it's a good guy or a bozo - you got to stay on the case. You don't vote and go home and give them the keys to the car, he'll drive you right off a cliff. You have to help people to stay honest.

Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me.

I had no reason to want to copy anybody else. What I wanted to give audiences for the few minutes that I thought my career would last was something unique.