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.

The art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism.

I had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer.

Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject.

The thing about the ray gun is, you pick up anything you see on the street that's the shape of a gun.

The right angle is one of the world's basic shapes.

I got a job as a dishwasher in Oakland, and I would draw all day. It was nice because the lady who ran the boardinghouse where I worked let me live there for nothing if I gave her some drawings every week - mostly park drawings of birds and such.