I work every day. I work all day. I've never had a holiday. It's all I really want to do. It's what I'm here for. . . . More and more, I'm just so grateful I was born an artist.

Autobiography is the most fascinating thing you can do because you get to touch the human condition. And in the end, what else is there? To me, it's the ultimate affirmation of life, and a miracle of this transient, extremely fragile organism. To celebrate that, I think, is a noble thing to do.

For me, drawing is everything, because it informs everything. It even informs my poetry. It's the way I begin everything.

I'm not a pop artist. For me pop never was.... Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don't think pop artists feel that way.

I do not think that obsession is funny or that not being able to stop one's intensity is funny.

Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another.

More important than having a romance with the object that I'm drawing, is to have a romance with the mark that I am making.