Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.

I met David Smith through my former wife, Cornelia, who'd studied with him.

I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.

In the '50s Morris Louis and I were not known, David Smith and Helen Frankenthaler were not much known.

For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything.

Usually I throw away what I don't get right the first time.

Because of this the representation I'm interested in is of those things only the eye can touch.

I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

Context begins with other artists - seniors and mentors.

Pollock was well known, certainly, but for all the wrong reasons. He was known as much for being wild and unconventional in his working methods as for being a great artist.

The scene then as now was centered in New York. For the most part, I've kept a bit apart from that attractive and seductive city. I've done it by living in the country within commuting distance.

With artists of my own generation there was at first no group identity - and never a clique.

As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.

Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.

You truly have to make the very best of what you've got. We all do.

I have fun. I don't take myself too seriously.

I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind of change, though.

In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

The guitar for me is a translation device. It's not a goal. And in some ways, jazz isn't a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works.

Frame thy mind to mirth and merriment which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

Divorce sucks. Let me tell you after five years of marriage it is devastating to have the person with the good credit move out.

In my experience, being busy and working hard is the key to sanity/happiness.

People assume you aren't sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you're hurting.

I used to have a pony but I outgrew it and I do dream that one day I will live in the country and have lots of horses and be like a proper English lady who goes hunting and everything.

I was very spiritual as a kid. I think I felt and thought about things a lot more deeply than most of the other kids my age. I wanted to help people.

There is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse.

I liked to think I had written 'scripts' when I was in high school, but looking back at them, they were about thirty pages of wannabe-Mamet dialogue with a staple through them.

In the comic-book lore, of course, you mutate post a traumatic event. You must have the mutant gene, but if something traumatic happens to you, usually at puberty, then that mutation manifests itself.

I wish I never fell so deep in love with you and now it ain't no way we can be friends.

The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a persons life.

I've always been interested in using mathematics to make the world work better.

Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.

All lawyers are going to have to - if we really want to attain civil justice - address the issue of how complicated we have made the laws: what we have done to ensnarl the American people in bureaucratic rules and regulations that make access to services or compliance with the law sometimes difficult, if not impossible.

I think my masks reference artists who reference primitivism. They're not directly connected to tribal arts. I think they look more like third-grade art projects.

The idea of a 'happening' is that there is little distance between the viewer and it, whatever 'it' is. It's an experience that's on-going and evolving.

I didn't think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditions.

It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.

We must enforce the laws we have on the books, secure our borders, and deny special benefits to illegal immigrants such as in-state tuition rates. This approach is best for American citizens and is fair to those who have taken the time and effort to go through the legal immigration process.