I have no regrets, because I've done everything I could to the best of my ability.

The country is so wounded, bleeding, and hurt right now. The country needs to be healed-it's not going to be healed from the top, politically. How are we going to heal? Art is the healing force.

I'd been influenced by reading books on art and colonies that existed in Paris and places like that and so when I came to Europe I came to France and I had very little money, and I had to live low and stayed in a bohemian section of Paris with a lot of other students, who were from medical school, science school and art school. We all lived in a kind of communal way and I was challenged politically, because I didn't have a clue and they would ask me questions about the Algerian War, which was very big in France in the late '50s.

It's good to say, 'Look, I can't always be right, but my gut tells me this' - and then you confirm with your gut.

It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter.

I think you just keep going. I've been that way, my whole life.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings a certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.