I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions."

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.

There was an expression of intensity in dance that was so compelling to me that I wanted a piece of that action.

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

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

Sometimes audiences love you because they get to boo you.