Curiosity is the main energy.
I think of art as a glue, a cultural and social glue. It's one of the means that has served to show us the things we believe in and the things we celebrate; it has served to reinforce our relationship to each other.
Almost all of my early art dealt with the fallout from middle-class taboos, the messy, the ambivalent emotions couples felt, the inherent racism, the sexual tensions and the unhappiness roiling below the surface of our prim suburban lives. Meanwhile I was a suburban bad boy - cynical, sarcastic, contemptuous of all authority.
Nudity is a problem for Americans. It disrupts our social exchange.
The saying "the business of art is different than the purpose of art" makes sense, and what are you going to do about that? You have some obligation to get the work out there, you believe in it enough that it should be out in the public, but of course it goes through a system that takes it pretty far away from the reasons you made them.
If you worry about how good the art is, you're never going to make your own art.
A precision of composition and figuration is what I'm working toward. I've always felt viewers should have an experience without having to ask what the hell is was about.
I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.
I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.
I do not think that torture is necessary. But it may be the case that interrogation methods that go beyond questioning, but do not arise to the level of torture, may be necessary to get actionable intelligence from high-ranking al Qaeda leaders.
Nothing is more beautiful than a line that brings out a form.