It's very hard to find artists in the history of western art who don't make portraiture ideological in some way.

I had to re-write "Philosophy" a lot. It was more obscure than what's in the book now, even! Some things I had to go back to and excise my former self, who was even more dense. I think you should teach whatever you want, Brian! That's the point of books like White Girls, to help free our thoughts!

Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time?

The artist’s memory is a dangerous, necessary thing. Never disavow what you see and remember-it’s your brilliant stock-in-trade: remembering, and making something out of it. Artists remember the world as it is, first, because you have to know what it is you’re reinventing; that’s a rule, perhaps the only one: being cognizant of your source material.

I used to always love taking photos, but I would always give a camera away to someone else. Now I don't give the camera away anymore. It also takes a long time to develop a visual style, and I think that the things that I was imitating were people I love, like Judy Linn or Gerald Turner, and then it slowly started to become more myself.

Every time I put a collection together I'd scrap it because there was no "meaning," until I wrote about the two black men - friends - in the beginning of the book. So much of their experience was ABOUT trying to find friends in the authors/artists I wrote about - subjects that were/are a source of comfort, somehow, since none of them "fit," either

Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure.