I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.

I had stopped making figures, and then I began making images of animals in nature, which was a way to introduce the figure.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

I always say I'm Catholic - but a cultural Catholic. I wouldn't say I'm a spiritual person, although I pray every day.

Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.

I'm not moving from an ideological standpoint. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life better. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life worse! I'm trying to find a happy medium that I can make some sense of.

One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that's really beautiful too. It just isn't beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before.