You have to like everything that you're painting. Maybe on a narrative level it seems harsh... but I like everything in all my paintings. It's as if you need to be less intelligent at that level.

I think what I do is find a cliché and try to believe in it, try to get to where I don't laugh at it.

Painting is like being a lawyer and attacking a corporation.

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.

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.

There's nothing worse than people talking about theories and humor.

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.