I began composing works which were imitative of the music I was being told about. I was also very interested in translating the music into visual terms.

I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.

Rock became an incredible commercial success, people just became bored with serious music, and it was forgotten.

When I began competing with the other artists in New York, I discovered classical North Indian music.

Basically, at this time, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

I began demonstrating against serious culture. In hindsight, the actual course of events has been very humiliating for me, because no one picked up on the intellectual critique I made.

Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it.

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

A fully open mind could shatter the skull in both directions.

The purpose of concept art as a genre is to unbrainwash our mathematical and logical faculties.

Sometimes we're loyal to more than one thing. When there's a conflict, we have to choose which loyalty to honor.

In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.

The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.

Parrots make great pets. They have more personality than goldfish

By this act the president alone is empowered to make the law, to fix in his mind what acts, words, what thoughts or looks, shall constitute such a crime.

Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.

I'm going to be in another city when my kids are teenagers. I'll be like, 'Give me a call when you're done with all that.'

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.

First of all, I'm in favor of making price gouging a crime, and in fact, one the reasons I didn't vote for the Republican House version was because there were too many breaks for the oil companies.

And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn't matter anymore.