Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.

• I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.
• I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.
• I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.
• There is nothing so stable as change.
• I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else.
• You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent God, the all-great God, the Almighty God, the most powerful God, the giver of life God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.
• Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.
• I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.
• I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.
• I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.