SoHo was called Hell's Hundred Acres because it was full of sweatshops - without fire escapes. Completely not up to code. Every once in a while, these buildings would burn and 26 Puerto Ricans would be killed.

The world is imperfect, and young people are always trying to perfect it and they always fail - which is a good thing. Who'd want to live in a perfect world?

I was one of the first post-studio artists. I used to do my works in the streets. I used to find them in the streets, and I used to leave them in the streets.

By nature, I am a materialist... It is exactly these impingements upon our sense of touch and so forth that I'm interested in.

Money is a very complicated problem. The history of money is very curious.

Artists tend to be beyond embarrassment the way little children tend to be beyond embarrassment.

I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward.