I start a picture and I finish it.

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.

I had some money, I made the best paintings ever. I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.

I start a picture and I finish it.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.

Believe it or not, I can actually draw.

I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.

Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.

For a while, I was drawing on good paper, but now I've gone back to the bad stuff. I put matte medium on it. If you put matte medium on it, it seals up, so it doesn't really matter.

I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.

I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.

I like kids' work more than work by real artists any day.

I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.

I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.

I wanted to build up a name for myself.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I'm not a real person. I'm a legend.

If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.

Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.

Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.

The more I paint the more I like everything.

There are about 30 words around you all the time, like 'thread' or 'exit.'

The country makes me more paranoid you know I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.

Every single line means something.

I'm glad that my films have been consistently faring well rather than one stray Friday!

'Big Bang' is unbelievable; I'm blessed, but it's not the only thing in my life.

The second time around, I'll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn't care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

I've always loved jazz.

These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus.

I think every good song tells a story, as ambiguous and vague as it may be. And if you know what a song is talking about, it can only help your performance.

Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, but we have to apply our strength wisely.

I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all.

There is always a delightful sense of movement vibration and life.

The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture.

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.

All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now.

Greater technological connectivity makes the world wider, and the walls of isolation - thinner.

I have no sense of what I should or shouldn't talk about. I just blather. Which is why it's fun to write 'Gossip Girl.' I do tend to just talk about anything.

Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.

Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else it is so sharp precise obvious and direct. If we can open then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.

You name the demonstration; I was at it.

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.

Men and women were declared equal one morning and everybody could divorce each other by postcard.

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.