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.

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

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

I'm not trying to be a finger-wagger at society. I sort of start with myself.

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.

I stopped painting because I was so shocked at what I was doing and how much I wasn't in the work. The work was alien to me. I didn't know how to paint in a way that would get me out of this funk.

I think it's really important as an artist not to be drawn to the haters, because there are so many people who are nice and quiet.