A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything.

Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.

Art is a way to get strength from something that is life-affirming. It can be quite violent and still be life-affirming.

My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.

I have two children and they're young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.

It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.

Mark Twain was an artist working at the highest level. He wrote a book, his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that put America on the world stage for literature. It's almost as if, if you start reading that book as a racist, you cannot finish it and still be a racist.