I stopped painting because I was so shocked at what I was doing and how much I wasn't in the work. The work was alien to me. I didn't know how to paint in a way that would get me out of this funk.

I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions."

You have to be polite with your friends and your family, but in your art, it's important to not be polite.

You always feel very vulnerable when you put your work out there. You feel a kind of nakedness. And you expose something of the inner workings of the way you experience life.

I think it's important to make art that is not that easily absorbable, that is a challenge to the authorities.

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of.

If you don't have your unconscious working for you, you're really out of luck as an artist.

There was an expression of intensity in dance that was so compelling to me that I wanted a piece of that action.

A good film is always nourishing. It's not about it being hopeful or bleak; it's about how it touches you, how it moves or stirs you.

I'm not trying to be a finger-wagger at society. I sort of start with myself.

I think it's really important as an artist not to be drawn to the haters, because there are so many people who are nice and quiet.

An uncomfortable marriage can not bear the strain of the death of a beloved donkey.

If you cant beat 'em cooperate 'em to death!

Even now I can’t describe the fear that contaminated my blood like black ink.

One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

When the body is urged to participate with the universe, it creates access routes for emotionality and intellectuality as well.

As in some Irish houses, where things are so-so, One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show; But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in, They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in.

You have got to be willing to be poor as an entrepreneur.

This is The Tonight Show. I can't tell you too much about it, other than the fact that this program is going to go on forever.