I'm not trying to be a finger-wagger at society. I sort of start with myself.

I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions."

You have to be polite with your friends and your family, but in your art, it's important to not be polite.

You always feel very vulnerable when you put your work out there. You feel a kind of nakedness. And you expose something of the inner workings of the way you experience life.

I think it's important to make art that is not that easily absorbable, that is a challenge to the authorities.

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of.

If you don't have your unconscious working for you, you're really out of luck as an artist.

There was an expression of intensity in dance that was so compelling to me that I wanted a piece of that action.

A good film is always nourishing. It's not about it being hopeful or bleak; it's about how it touches you, how it moves or stirs you.

I think it's really important as an artist not to be drawn to the haters, because there are so many people who are nice and quiet.

Sometimes audiences love you because they get to boo you.

Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead.

The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.

Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they’re feeling righteous.

Those who are quiet will always cause riots.

It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.

As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love.

History tells us that the threat to prosperity is not debt but socialism.

If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader.

I believe in monogamy if that's what a couple decides upon together, but it all depends on the personal history and culture of the two involved.

Eloquence is logic on fire.