I do so much music that it's like a fog, and I can't even remember all of it.
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life.
In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.
Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.
I've watched too many artists in my life forget how good the things they used to do were.
I love art that haunts me, that stays with me, that is left embedded in my mind. I don't really think there is any use for owning or collecting art; it is more about remembering and preserving it in the minds eye and allowing it into your cultural DNA.
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies.
I had a lot of fun writing things that died during dress rehearsal. Sometimes I remember the crazy ones that died even more fondly than the ones that did really well.
Artists don't think archivally.
Some people have told me they remember the film that one of my images is derived from, but in fact I had no film in mind at all.
If I'm in something that I think is kinda good, it stays with me like a fever dream for a long time afterwards. I don't recall the finished product so much as the feeling of making it.
I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.
There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.
When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.
Better that we leave the paint behind," Hans told her, "than ever forget the music.
