Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change.

Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

I can't always reach the image in my mind... almost never, in fact... so that the abstract image I create is not quite there, but it gets to the point where I can leave it.

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both.

Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.