In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

When I made my first film, Basquiat, I think one of the criticisms was that the way I work is episodic. Later, as people started to look at the movies, they started to realize that maybe that's my style. If I could do it better or another way, I guess I would.

I've never made a movie to make money. I've never made a painting to make money.

I don't like building, I'm not a carpenter, I don't like constructions particularly and things like that, but placements and the kinds of psychological weight that different materials have is pretty interesting to me.

I don't know if I could, like, see a face and know what the face of beauty looks like, but after I've seen it I know if I've felt like it was beauty.

You can't have a good bullfight without a good bull.

There's been too much attention on marketing. Can't we just talk about the paintings?