You have to like everything that you're painting. Maybe on a narrative level it seems harsh... but I like everything in all my paintings. It's as if you need to be less intelligent at that level.

A lot of times maturing as an artist is just starting to do the things you like to do.

Your style is who you are when you’re not trying to be clever or better than you actually are.

I find I can't get rid of my trashiness as an artist. A lot of my themes in painting, to the extent that there are intentional themes, are meant to bring that conundrum into high relief.

I think a big problem with art school is that it makes people feel like they have to be interested in everything that's of high quality.

There is no misery in art. All art is about saying yes, and all art is about its own making.

Culture is for old people. When you're young you have your body, and that's all you need.

I think what I do is find a cliché and try to believe in it, try to get to where I don't laugh at it.

Instead of last man standing, it'll be last man smiling.

It's a huge thing when people realize across the culture that paper money is paper. And that there's no fixed value - it's all political. That all value is set by a political authority, basically.

That was an important development for me, just realizing that you need to follow your pleasure, at least as a painter. I think any kind of artist needs to, no matter what you're doing.

If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.

To know a man properly, you must know the shape of his hurt - the specific wound around which his person has been formed like a scab.

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

You've got to give up who you are now for who you want to be in the future.

I had friends of mine tell me they had a baby, and I didn't even know they were pregnant.

Daphne felt something wild and wicked take hold. “Let’s walk in the garden,” she said softly. “We can’t.” “We must.” “We can’t.

Like a human rights lawyer who uses the law to rectify wrongs, I use filmic storytelling for the same effect.

we are drawn to each other like drops of water, like the planets we repulse each other like magnets, like the color of our skin.