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.

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?'

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!

Don't try to follow trends. Create them.

SakeThe jewel which brightly shines at nightIs precious, but cannot measure up To the delights of drinking sake, Drowning one's troubles in the cup. Otomo no Tabito

For a moment, just be silent and feel the joy of life.

We smoked a lot of weed together [with Seth Rogen and Jason Segel]. Lonely potheads will literally spend every day with each other until they get a girlfriend. That's essentially what happened.

You cannot preach self-government and liberty to people in a starving land.

All music is the blues. All of it.

A billion dollars every week for Iraq, $87 billion for Iraq. We can't get $5 billion for childcare over five years in welfare reform.

God it's good to be here walkin together, my friend.

Gotta start teaching the children that they can be just what they want to be, there's much more to life than poverty.

The desire for narration keeps on reasserting itself, so that since modernism and fiction brought narration to an end, it is sought in memoirs.