Of course, the '60s was a study in decadence. Everything just got worse and worse, and at the end of the '60s, everything was so horrible that people were killing each other.

I was very happy to be living in New York at that time, more than in the present time. Now it's all commerce.

I went back to the Art Institute, then spent the summer at the Ox-Bow School in Saugatuck, Michigan. That's what really awakened me. I made a lot of oil paintings and my first performance.

If I didn't think what I was doing had something to do with enlarging the boundaries of art, I wouldn't go on doing it.

My rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn't copying; I was remaking them as my own.

The sexual is part of everything, and it's highly formalized. I hadn't done figure for a long time. And I thought to myself, "Why not the erotic figure?"

For a thorough use of ice cream cones, buy two; eat one and drop the other.