“I am black. What are you going to do about it?”

My work is an act of communication, and it’s important to me the way what I assert lands, and where it lands within someone who sees it.

In this sense, the work as such is nonexistent except when it functions as a medium of change between the artist and viewer.

Racism is a visual pathology.

On the other hand, I also recognize fully and live by the principle that once the work leaves my studio, I cannot control the effects it has.

One reason for making and exhibiting a work is to induce a reaction or change in the viewer.

You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

That’s what we’re all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand.

It’s a great feeling to know that 100 cops want to stop you doing something and they can’t.

Everybody’s on their toes and focused on what we’re about to do, and then there’s this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

I’m always a little leery about doing shows where I’m not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes.

I read a lot. I spend of lot time thinking. It actually looks like I’m doing nothing, but… hanging out with clever and interesting people is a must if you’re writing comedy, like hanging out with a good bass player when you’re a drummer.