I see paintings everywhere. I look at stuff and it looks like painting to me.

You seem to make different concessions with yourself about what you want to focus on or not, and what you want to pay attention to.

The thing about living in New York is that there are other artists; that is the most difficult, I think they are the hardest critics.

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 think people have problems sometimes when things are too general. In fact, they are not really general at all.

Sometimes I'll dream that I saw a show and then I'll wake up in the morning and realize that I didn't see the show, that it was my dream. And I just remember what the paintings look like in the dream and I think, "Oh, nobody painted those. I can do that."

I want the paintings to take me or the viewer out somewhere else.