It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.

Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.

I always wear the same thing onstage.

I had this idea that the coolest thing that could happen to you was talking with God.

Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.