Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent - which is the way it should be. All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.

When you're working with an object, you can put in almost anything you want, you can make it abstract.

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

Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.

I am an immigrant in a sense. What happened was that my father was stationed in New York when my mother became pregnant, and she said, "I've got to go to Sweden so this child can be born there, because you don't have any idea where you're going to be transferred next."

It was easy to get a job at the Cedar Bar because people came and went, but I didn't like the atmosphere. Instead, I got a job at Cooper Union Library. I stayed at Cooper Union for seven years; it was my salvation. While I worked there, I also read books of every kind.

Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too.