I'm always very grateful for stories about the great coffeehouse wits in Vienna at the turn of the last century. People would wait for a chance to stand near the table where the great wits were trading witticisms as a spectator sport because it was that good. They were that on fire and there was no product. They didn't write anything down. It was just the pleasure of engagement with the moment. I think that's my kind of ideal of how I live.

Fairfield Porter who has been my model for art writing all along, said that if the most interesting thing about a work of art is its content, it's probably a failure. I think it's true that if you find yourself thinking about the meaning in an author's message, it's probably not very interesting as art. Obviously, this is a tough concept, because if you withdraw intention.

To know how to structure the joke perfectly so that the narrative information is given in the right tempo, in just the right dose - it sometimes takes quite a lot of work. It seems easy when you hear the joke.

I was in a group show at a museum in Torino, a lot of American artists installed in a floor of this museum. Another floor of the museum houses the most refined collection of arte povera in the world, which is perfectly selected and perfectly installed. I remember being struck by the contrast between the Italian works and the American. I would say the hallmarks of the Italian style are a poetical connection to nature and to materiality, materials, and exquisite taste. On contrast, the American work was essentially a bunch of bad-tempered, complaining kids.

People tend to remember and mentally classify work according to how it looks, sometimes oblivious to the underlying intent.

Ever since I started painting, I have tried to get the fluidity and surprise of image connection, the simultaneity of film montage, into painting.

I think people have to be given - or take - the permission to say that something is nothing. Just because it's in a museum doesn't mean it's anything.