Whenever possible, I operate outside the system.

My use of the medium - photography - is in some ways traditional.

As a former Catholic, and as someone who even today is not opposed to being called a Christian, I felt I had every right to use the symbols of the Church and resented being told not to.

I am just an artist.

I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious.

I like the aesthetics of the Church.

Unfortunately, the Church's position on most contemporary issues makes it hard to take them seriously.

I think if the Vatican is smart, someday they'll collect my work.

I like going to Church for aesthetic reasons, rather than spiritual ones.

In my work, I explore my own Catholic obsessions.

Oftentimes we love the thing we hate and vice versa.

An artist is nothing without his or her obsessions, and I have mine.

Some people have compared the Klan images to ecclesiastical figures.

My work is intensely personal.

One of the things that I am happy about in my life as an artist is that I am not considered a Hispanic artist.

People have to find ways of explaining the work.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.

I usually refer to myself as Hispanic.

My work has social implications, it functions in a social arena.

I am drawn to Christ but I have real problems with the Catholic Church.

Being born, especially being born a person of color, is a political act in itself.

Whenever possible, I operate outside the system.

I have never voted in my life.

I don't think that because I am Hispanic I should therefore do Hispanic work.

I like to believe that rather than destroy icons, I make new ones.

I have never been able to see myself as fitting into one category, and I have never been able to limit my contact with people to one group of people.

I like Church furniture.

I am an artist first and a photographer second.

Do not be afraid to get close to your opponent. The closer you are, the more you will learn.

You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.

It's always fun to put on bell bottoms and have your butt hanging out and hip huggers.

The Goddess of Old Europe and Ancient Crete represented the unity of life in nature delight in the diversity of form the powers of birth death and regeneration.

One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8, I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later.

I will only think of settling down after Salman Khan, the other most eligible bachelor, plans to settle down. We are eligible bachelors, but he's the rock star, so let him get married first; then I'll think about myself.

I went a little nuts in my twenties, but I just turned thirty and I feel, like, older now.

Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgement.

Maybe 'Can't Stop Feeling' and 'Turn It On' we'll just release as singles. It's a thing The Beatles used to do which I really loved, the idea of releasing something as a single completely on its own.

None of this matters to the rose keepers of Elizabeth. / From the backyards of row houses / they bring forth pink roses, yellow roses/and around a house on its own green plot, a hedge of roses, in red and white.

We are wiser than we know.

If fate means you to lose give him a good fight anyhow.

I never thought a basketball shoe would be named after a woman, let alone me.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise.

I think for really good-hearted people, that idea of putting yourself in the shoes of a monster to figure out why they acted that way, that's a really frightening idea.

When I look back on what I've done, I think I'm drawn to obsession, perhaps.

I paid for my name a lot when I was growing up because other kids teased me.

I think Hollywood is so driven by money, the people who are making the decisions are not necessarily reflective of the melting pot, so what stories are you going to want to tell? You're going to want to tell stories about yourself.

A curious consequence is that I have become a minor celebrity.

I don't hate children. My wife and I just didn't think we would be good parents, and also by the time we got married in 1968, we were pretty nose-down toward what we wanted to do, and having a child was going to be an excuse to fail.