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

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.

Australia is much more liberal in accepting de facto relationships than the U.S.

I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.

I have a British passport, but the rest of my family have Indian passports, and I am Indian.

It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth.

While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives.

Look to the lighthouse of the Lord. There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost but what its beacon light can rescue.

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating.

Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.

I want to give back. I want to do all the things that will make me feel fulfilled. But whenever I do those things, people think it's a press stunt or something.

It gets very tiring when you are filming and then taken to a room to do school work. I never get any rest time. It is either work or school. Once you are an adult, you get to take a nap in between shots.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

A pure belief can not be forced on human's heart. If it could, no need for terms such as "I've told you".

I've gone through many, many things. I tell you something, that if it doesn't kill you, you get stronger.

I am no David Beckham. I have not changed my life since I was 15 years old. My family is the only thing that has changed for me.

My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies.

A good addiction is a contradiction in terms. Anything people cant give up or must have is not healthy no matter what the activity

How proud I am to be compared to Oprah. I really admire her. She's a minority woman and she's done all this by herself... I'm very happy to be Oprah with salsa and not Donahue in drag.

Don't hang your hat higher than you can reach.

Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.

I think it's the people who have no doubt that every word they put down is gold that probably don't write very well.