Art grabs people by their eyeballs, it seduces them ... art is a means to an end rather than simply an end in itself.

If I do a picture, I want the audience to be the people I was just packed against on the subway or on the street, walking on Fourteenth Street. I don't want it to be some narrow public that I myself feel alienated from.

The poster art over the years, art with social critique in it, has always been trying to make that point - that we are larger than they are.

Most visual artists, just like most writers, tend to be solitary. While they're doing the art, that is. They may have a crazy orgy that morning, but at a certain point they kick everybody out, and say: "Come, go home. Yeah, I had a great time too." And then you're alone again, and then you're freshly inspired and energized.

Doing art that has a happy ending, that doesn't seem really corny, is extremely difficult to pull off convincingly.

There's so much tragedy in people that we see every day that we don't have to make anything up. We don't have to invent anything. There are two items on the menu: comedy and tragedy.

Art grabs people by their eyeballs, it seduces them. Especially if the picture is very beautiful or very sexy or just really weird, if it has some surreal element in it.