I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it.

I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.

I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.

I'm old-fashioned. I think William Blake and people in the Renaissance people were multi. Look at da Vinci, he was involved in science; and Michelangelo was dabbling in poetry. Both of them were painters and sculptors but they also involved themselves with architecture. I honestly don't know what happened in the '60s and '70s. If you sang rock and roll in America at that time or were involved in expressing yourself through music like that, then many thought you couldn't possibly be an artist. That thinking is archaic.

People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.