What's interesting about making art is that you take everything you know about it and you bring it up to that point, and you start making a physical thing that addresses what that is. And when you do it, you don't know anything about it - if it's going to work or not work.

I don't think my paintings are self-conscious but you feel the consciousness of them. Without them being self-conscious.

I don't think the meaning in my paintings comes from just using broken dishes.

I think style is a fringe benefit that looks like you made it.

Everything I've seen becomes real once it becomes memory. The films I've seen are interchangeable with things that have really happened to me.

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.

If I hung one of my paintings next to someone else's, I knew mine would kind of pop off the wall.