I think it's important to make art that is not that easily absorbable, that is a challenge to the authorities.

I was looking at books and reading the indexes and finding a next book and reading that book, and then from that index ... It was a version of surfing the internet before the internet. I was surfing the New York Public Library. It was back when you had to fill out a form and put it in a chute.

If you don't have your unconscious working for you, you're really out of luck as an artist.

You always feel very vulnerable when you put your work out there. You feel a kind of nakedness. And you expose something of the inner workings of the way you experience life.

Sometimes audiences love you because they get to boo you.

I think one important thing that happens in the studio is accepting yourself as the enemy and painting from that point of view. So instead of pointing the finger outward and passing judgment, instead, you start with yourself as your own worst enemy.

You have to be polite with your friends and your family, but in your art, it's important to not be polite.