It is better to go down in infamy than to never go down at all.

I was a gang leader. Although, it was a gang for defensive purposes. It was not a gang to sell drugs.

Performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theater. This is due to the usually small audience.

A performance art piece is unprecedented. It is difficult to censor since it has a good possibility of never being done before.

We're all so mauled by information, but it's recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you've got to get bizarre. This is an artist's purpose - to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that.

Basically the school system sets you up with what it wants to set you up with. They're really good at it. I think they're too good. Problem is, what they're doing is conditioning kids to merely accept the culture at hand. But the rebels won't accept it.

It is better to go down in infamy than to never go down at all.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

I love old books. They tell you stories about their use. You can see where the fingerprints touched the pages as they held the book open. You can see how long they lingered on each page by the finger stains.

This is why my art is about violence. Because I was subjected to so much of it as a kid. After that, and a lot of thinking, I became less violent. I realized that there must be other ways. So, I started to pursue them.

At one point, when I was 20 and living in Kentucky, I got shot - it was a land dispute over six inches of property that ran a hundred yards through my grandfather's land. It was really over the honor of my family and that of another family.

The act is truth. Nothing that was ever recorded is truth. Nothing that was ever said is truth. Only the act.

I'm still very aware of the violence in our culture, more so than other people. I know where it comes from when someone is trying to suppress someone else, sometimes they fight back.

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting.

My 80-year-old mother will not buy her heart medicine because it cost more than she can pay with social security. She is America.

My parents were laborers so we lived on South Park, which was a low-income region of Seattle. You had a choice - you either joined or formed a gang or you let others bully you.

Performance art can be produced in a coffee house setting.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen.

My kids are free to do what ever they want. Because I only advise. I don't make them do anything.

But my patriotism goes for something beyond what we have. We don't have something that I want to die for - anymore.

Performance art is the ultimate in creativity. Since it has so many possibilities at creativity, it's essence tends to become creativity.

Freedom. It's not something you go out and die for.

I've been in elementary education for years and my belief is that Christmas pageants in schools are little more than conditioning kids for the Christian religion.

I believe that I understand gangs better than others. Because they're formed out of necessity. They're formed by people to keep from being suppressed.

Retirement to me does not mean nothing to do but the realization of the decisions I made in the past. That I made in my life.

If life deals you lemons, make lemonade

Everybody I know who is funny, it's in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don't like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.

As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me.

The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking-it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings.

Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. Wearing a backpack and a turtleneck is like a weak midget trying to bring you down.

I feel good about my life.

I needed to give back, give back, give back. I felt guilty about my success. I felt uncomfortable about how easily I had been delivered this extraordinary life that I had.

In the mind of every artist there is a masterpiece.

I don't consider myself a rock star chef, I really don't. I cook for a living and I try to help out as many people as I can in my life and that's all I care about. I don't care about the fame of television, I use to a lot.

There's one thing about baldness, it's neat.

We didn't play any Joy Division songs for 10 years after the start of New Order, which was a very honourable thing to do even if it meant shooting ourselves in the foot.

If you can find a nice pretty country girl that can cook and carries her bible now theres a woman.

It's different for different people, and for a woman it's important to look as good she wants to look. But you don't need to do it for someone else or to impress some male out there. You do it for your own sake. You wear what makes you feel good, you put make-up and jewellery - whatever gives you self-confidence.

I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

The American people overwhelmingly oppose taxpayer funding of abortions, and it's no different in Arizona, where we have long-standing policy against subsidizing them with public dollars.

My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created... what power that was!

The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves.

After you ride a roller coaster that's been going up for a year and a half, and you reach the pinnacle and then dive straight down with no gradual decline, it's a little disorienting. I didn't know how to take losing.

The biggest ingredient in a best friend is someone whose actions you respect and who you can truly be yourself around.

A majority, perhaps as many as 75 percent, of abortion clinics are in areas with high minority populations. Abortion apologists will say this is because they want to serve the poor. You don't serve the poor, however, by taking their money to terminate their children.

Acting found me. I thought maybe I should try to find it again. We'll see.

I support our country being our country.

A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life.

I'm the world 'Guinness Book of Records' holder of 1,749 hugs in one hour. My arms fell off.