But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.
It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.
I've just grown as a person, accepting my flaws as well. Before I was very insecure and I used to just hide, and now I just accept that I'm an imperfect human.
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.
Remember, this was a world that was still ethnically separated. I was thirteen and ignorant of the social situation in America, but I felt these records were better than what my own culture was turning out.
In some ways, I lament the introduction of civilisation on such a huge scale, because it has given us a lot of room to abuse each other, which we continue to do.
Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.
The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.
But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes.
I've had an advantage; I've had a sort of open public acceptance in New York that doesn't happen to just anyone trying to make the transition you were talking about.
It's not like making records is terrible. Still, I do find the writing of the songs and the live shows to be the things that give you the most clear picture of what it's all about.
I think when you put a new record out, everyone has a song or two that they feel people will be moved by so much that radio will be forced to play it.
I'm certainly not a practicing Jew. I would never claim, 'I'm Jewish.' That's not the first and foremost thing in my mind, as far as who I am as a person.
As far as anybody in the rap game ever tryin' to assassinate my character, that's impossible. You talkin' about a man who has always walked the walk and talked the talk.
You know, I'm trying to sometimes sit down and write some stories about my childhood and maybe one when I'm an old lady put them out like a book.
I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.
Picabia is a very old painter who some people try to connect me to, but I refuse such comparisons very well.
Because I was traveling a lot during the '70s, the only thing I could do on the road was take photographs, so there wasn't much painting during those years.
I've never been interested in philosophy, but some of Jung's ideas seem useful in helping people understand pictures and so forth.
I have simply said that there's just a side of me that could not judge anybody singing. It's not who I am. I don't want to be that person.
The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.
