I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.

I think I've always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me - and this is where some people just don't get it, or they'd prefer it if the work was a lot uglier, a lot louder - I have this personality where I just want to put something out that's a fact and then let you interpret it. It's almost as if you might barely notice it, you might walk right by it, but you have to pay attention.

Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.

Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.

You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.