I probably also wanted to be black at that particular time [ 9 years old] as well.

Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.

I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

I was always accused of being cold and unfeeling. It was because I was intimidated about touching people.

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

Someday, I'm gonna write a poem in a letter; Someday, I'm gonna get that faculty together.

I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.