“I think that art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook. I’m trying to be affective, to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level.”

What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing – the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up.

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it’s the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.

Warhol’s images made sense to me, although I knew nothing at the time of his background in commercial art. To be honest, I didn’t think about him a hell of a lot.

I’ve always thought that it’s good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that’s how consensus is constructed.

Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.

You make history when you do business.

It entered the visual vocabulary of photographers, painters and sculptors and focused on what pictures and words look like and what they can mean.

Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I’m working in.

Doubt tempers belief with sanity.

I think what I’m trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.

As with the Princess Di crash, which sent the media on the most insane feeding frenzy. From the moment of the crash, the pornography of sentiment never let up.

All violence is the illustration of a pathetic stereotype.

Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different.

I’m trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.

I try to be available for life to happen to me. We’re in this life, and if you’re not available, the sort of ordinary time goes past and you didn’t live it. But if you’re available, life gets huge. You’re really living it.

…even misplaced faith can help us gain knowledge. We try to be smart about where we put our faith and we adjust as we learn more.

In business, you try to solve problems.

What I have now are good problems of trying to decide and what I really want to do is good work next. My phone’s ringing a lot more and I’ve got nine lines so when it doesn’t ring, it’s very frustrating.

I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and—if you’re not careful—those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there’s some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You’re making it too complicated.

You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.