Connecting to another is one of the most important things in the world and you can keep expanding that connection - one person, a family, a community, a country, a society, a culture.

One of the things I love within music and within sports is how often musicians and athletes thank their audience. In the art world, you would never hear that.

Abstraction is an esoteric language.

Personally, I never believe an artist saying "I do it for myself" is saying the truth, because why would you go through the trouble of making something that goes out into the world if you didn't care about somebody else seeing it? It's like the difference between those who choose "more comfortably termed entertainment" versus what people think of as the "art life," which is supposedly more monastic or spiritual. I don't believe in those distinctions.

I think of art as a glue, a cultural and social glue. It's one of the means that has served to show us the things we believe in and the things we celebrate; it has served to reinforce our relationship to each other.

Connecting to something keeps our empathy alive.

Nudity is a problem for Americans. It disrupts our social exchange.