As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.

I'd read about Los Angeles and this fact stuck in my mind: that the city gained 1,000 new people every day. In 1956! A thousand people every day! I felt: 'I want to be part of that.

I would rather say that I have to be not from Los Angeles but from America. When I go to Europe or Asia, I find myself disoriented. I'm not so inspired by their culture as much. It's not going to really come out in my work. I would be more influenced by what somebody from America does - like a sign painter from Pennsylvania.

I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified. Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.

Yes, there's a certain power to a photograph. The camera has a way of disorienting a person, if it wants to and, for me, when it disorients, it's got real value.

Good art should elicit a response of 'Huh? Wow!' as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?'

Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.