The tattoo can only exist as part of the skin, as a drawing always is an incision in the material and therefore cannot be parted from it.

Art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life.

The artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is too narrow, he has to open up to new perspectives.

When I talk of reality, I am always thinking of essentials. Profundity is not located in some remote, inaccessible region. It is rooted in everyday life.

They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes. I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought.

The highest wisdom adopts the humblest of bodies.

I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.

Painting quickly is a calculated act to block out rational thought.

A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious; such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance.

I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.

My illusion is to have something to transmit. If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.

The world is yours. Occupy it sacred space.

People who have character follow through. They don't lie to themselves or anyone else. They don't start something, ten give up because it's "hard." People of character set a goal and stick to it.

If we have an honest discussion on whether the war on poverty should be fought with welfare or with economic growth in the private sector, Democrats will lose black votes.

For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.

She lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

Trump was the logical outcome of the Republican's irrational, racialized backlash to Obama that had utterly come to dominate the party's thinking.

I hope I will live to see a final meeting of the minds between Puerto Rico and statehood. But if I don’t live that long, I am certain it will happen.

Actors and preachers are people who stand up on stage and have no problem talking and they have no problem saying, "Listen to me. Follow me. I know what I'm talking about."

Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.