If you do not join the polluted, then you are pure; if you reject society in search of purity, that is not purity but fanaticism.
I don't want to express violence or anger or hate in my art. I want to express forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the nature of my art in general. It's expressing love and compassion, the kinds of things that don't make sense in any other context other than emotive expression.
Art comes after the fact, as a witness to certain things that have happened.
Art can be a kind of therapeutic, or kind of a fantasy life, or wish fulfillment. . . o r creating this alternate universe. Art gives me the freedom to do that.
It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own.
What social media has done - Facebook, Twitter - is show the audience. I don't have an audience. When I make my work, it just goes out into the ether. I have a thick skin and it just brings me down to earth, you know, to realize how out-there and far away and paltry the audience is that gets what I'm saying. It's depressing if I let it get to me. And it's the same with hanging a show, the way it's put up, like, three stories high and you can't read a single word.
Perfecting one's intellect causes one to speak less, and those words spoken will be adorned with wisdom.
I get really insecure because even though I can speak in musician's terms, I don't know as much as real musicians.
Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read. . . . We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books” — join in the cry.
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it that is great, that belongs to greatness.