All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.

I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are, what we want to be and what we become.

I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans.

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.

GIVE YOUR BRAIN AS MUCH ATTENTION AS YOU DO YOUR HAIR AND YOU'LL BE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER OFF.

I feel uncomfortable with the term public art, because I'm not sure what it means. If it means what I think it does, then I don't do it. I'm not crazy about categories.

It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized.

Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

The emotion was the most important thing.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

People used to think of vocal music as boring choir stuff, once you figured out that you can do crazy beat-boxing, awesome bass lines (and) throw everything together, you just have really cool music.

To me, my nephew is the angel of my world. It is my absolute happiest moment whenever he smiles at me.

I didn't even know how to shave at 15.

The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.

Creativity does not depend on inherited talent or on environment or upbringing; it is the function of the ego of every human being.