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

I think pictures and words have the power to make us rich or poor.

If I bring up political power, personal power, it sounds like they’re my terms, and they’re not.

I worked with someone else’s photos; I cropped them in whatever way I wanted and put words on top of them. I knew how to do it with my eyes closed. Why couldn’t that be my art?

It’s hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It’s because I understand short attention spans.

You want it, you buy it, you forget it.

The reason why bookstores are going out of business in the States is that people just can’t focus on longer narratives now – even narrative film is in crisis in many ways, unless it’s an adventure film.

Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be a drag. Especially if you choose to surround yourself with friends and not acolytes.

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

What I’m trying to do is create moments of recognition.

I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It’s the girl thing to do-you know, instead of pulling out a gun.

The so-called language of Barbara Kruger is vernacular language. Obviously, I pick through bits and pieces of it and figure out to some degree how to objectify my experience of the world, using pictures and words that construct and contain me.

Money talks. It makes art. It determines what food we eat, whether we are cured or die, and what shoes we wear.

Money talks. It starts rumors about careers and complicity and speaks of the tragedies and triumphs of our social lives.

I don’t necessarily think that installation is the only way to go. It’s just a label for certain kinds of arrangements.

It’s good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can’t be personalized.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

Maybe Rachel was right all along. Maybe the past is past, history is history, and you just push it aside and look for the future.

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

Look, we’re all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I’ve chosen to make my work about that insanity.

The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.

Feelings are your guide. Trust your feelings and learn to express them, and do not blame anyone for how you feel. Be yourself, observe yourself. Look to understand any crisis you have been in or will be in.

I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website – but on the internet, people only look at pictures of kittens.

When I look for happiness, I lose it. When I stop looking, and surrender to where I am, I find it.