I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.

I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.

Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.

Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.

I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface.

The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.

What I could never escape was Germany, and being German.

The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue... and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness.

They see me rollin’, they hatin’

Nobody said anything that time. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. After all, someone had to keep an eye on the fridge.

At its heart, music is all higher mathematics.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.

You want me to describe Elvis, wow!

Faith becomes the foundation I'm built on.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.