People have these weird ideas about artists being romantic, generous people, and sometimes I feel like an asshole, a selfish kid, a brat, the lucky one, because I get to do this and it's how I make my living.

There are so many different desires that make you execute an artwork.

A lot of the images I use are already out there in the public or in the news. I just steal them or photograph them or repaint them, so they've already been talked about, already been consumed.

It's nice that I can go down the road of obsessing over this smiley-face bullshit so maybe I can get free from it and think about something else-it's so banal and yet so crazy!

I feel like the biggest failure of humans is miscommunication. We can't communicate with each other-we can fight, we can kill, we can do those things well.

For me, Corsica is a place that I visited with my friends, maybe five or six times over the years, and I'm so happy there that I wanted to make a painting about it almost just to share with my friends, but it's so difficult when all your feelings are one way, and they're very sort of happy and pleasant. It's impossible to make a painting about it.

A lot of people use a smiley face when they write letters. But it's this huge insane compulsion, like "I'm happy! I swear!" I'm not buying it. I don't believe them.