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.

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.

There's so much going on today. I continually hear, sometimes from artists, that everything's done. It's been done. I fail to see that.

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

My friends and neighbors were always fixing their cars. Soldiers who felt restless wanted to work on something, and they understood cars. Me, I like to look at cars but I was never really a mechanic.

I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.

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.