I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.

They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing 'cause that's a way of understanding life.

From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.

I'm always terrified when I'm writing.

When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.

Your acting will not be good until it is only yours. That's true of music, acting, anything creative. You work until finally nobody is acting like you.