I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.

My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.

[Drawing] and making things was all we ever did. My brother and I built the entire New York World's Fair of 1939 in miniature out of wax. The floor of our room was covered with little waxen buildings. Nobody else could come in.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are.

There's a mystery there, a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me.

I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day; it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.