I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

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.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Life is full of challenges. In the end, it's getting up that pulls us through the dark days. So we can admire the sunset.

Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.

As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of understanding.

Never trust anyone under one hundred!

To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.

I like to go to places where you can relax a little after youre done working.

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

Theres nothing that can beat the feeling of doing a movie or a TV show that makes everyone feel good.

Peace won by compromise is usually a short lived achievement.