The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.
If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.
In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.
My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You're a lawbreaker. It's just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.
As long as there are people suffering, how can I not be happy?
I am primarily an oil painter and a studio painter, so originally I was going to do an oil painting.
I've always liked reading books that contain funny lines or situations, and maybe because my work is known chiefly for its violence and misery, I made a more conscious attempt with The Heavenly Table to do that myself.
I think it's good to have the alone time. Well, I kind of have to, because I have to be alone in order to work, so I have alone time. And then I go on tour and I have being-around-people time.