“I had to figure out how to bring the world into my work.”

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.

It’s a small world, but not if you have to clean it

Our authority figures, particularly our parents are hypnotic. Their words are hypnotic literally to small children because of brain wave patterns.

White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

And then once I figure out who they are I can figure out what they want and once I figure out what they want I’m able to put obstacles in the way of that desire, and that’s where plot springs from.

I couldn’t figure it out… then Michael told me that he had told Eric I had cancer and two months to live…

Too often boring players have been pushed forward as great by figures alone. For sheer entertainment, he will keep cricket alive.

By definition a sequel can’t be original. So you’ve got to figure out what worked the first time around.

A boat is the hardest think I know of to put into perspective. It is so much like a human figure, there is something alive about it.

They want to let the audience figure things out and let the reaction shot get the laugh.