If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'

The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does.

There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.

Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.

Im not really about blackness, per se, but about blackness and whiteness, and what they mean and how they interact with one another and what power is all about.

I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle?'

I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.

Humor's always been the problem of my work, hasn't it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing.

The promise of any artwork is that it can hold us - viewer and maker - in a conflicted or contestable space, without real-world injury or loss.

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.

As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win - or just not be so sad!

Whoever honoured the word of God shall be blessed.

It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end.

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion.

When we put people before possessions in our hearts, we are sowing seeds of enduring satisfaction.

I know if I had the chance of going aboard the Titanic in those days, I would have gone - I know I would have. I adore going on the Queen Mary - I think it's the only way to travel from New York.

The worst isn't done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings. (Samuel Tarly)

Listen carefully to the feedback your readers give you. Dont write unless people want you to write, a lot of people write just because they want to write.

One of the oldest secrets of alchemy is that every living thing, from the most complex creatures right down to the simplest leaf, carries the seeds of its creation within itself.

Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder.

He is the best preacher, not that tickles the ear, but that breaks the heart.