Painting is like being a lawyer and attacking a corporation.

I suppose the good artists, the righteous artists, somehow manage to be exuberant, and the embarrassed artist has this idea that everybody has to stop being so excited, which I find so distasteful.

In a capitalist system, things are valued by what people will pay for them.

Instead of last man standing, it'll be last man smiling.

It's a huge thing when people realize across the culture that paper money is paper. And that there's no fixed value - it's all political. That all value is set by a political authority, basically.

That was an important development for me, just realizing that you need to follow your pleasure, at least as a painter. I think any kind of artist needs to, no matter what you're doing.

It wasn't really until after I got out of art school that I realized that I'd been doing that sort of for the audience, for that context. Somehow, being alone in the room, it made no sense at all to make those kinds of paintings.