I'm not going to talk about Picasso. I have done my duty to those memories. I have had a great career as an artist myself, you know. I'm not here just because I've spent time with Picasso.
There were periods of my life when a lot of people didn't believe in me. I still had faith in myself. I really had to ask myself life questions. Where do I see myself in five years? Create a ladder for yourself, and walk up the steps. Climb that ladder.
Like Picasso, I go through blue periods, green periods, or grey periods.
Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.
If I had to compare myself to another artist, I wouldn't. I feel like my lyrics are really strong. I'm good at painting pictures and telling picture stories.
When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.
I've never been healthier. I haven't had a cigarette in two years. I run four or five miles, four or five times a week. I've been healthy and having a really good time.
You can easily compare chocolate to wine. What makes a good wine is usually a good terroir, a good grape, and the weather has something to do with it. Chocolate is the same, from where the cacao bean grows to what type of tree it grows on.
I could have been born into any family. I was fortunate that I was born to an artist as extraordinary as Picasso, and Picasso turned out to be the family business.
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.
I had a lot of things I wanted to do... I want to be a teacher...I also want to be an astronaut...and also make my own cake shop...I want to go to the sweets bakery and say "I want one of everything", ohhhh I wish I could live life five times over...Then I'd be born in five different places, and I'd stuff myself with different food from around the world...I'd live five different lives with five different occupations...and then, for those five times...I'd fall in love with the same person.
There are periods in your life in which you dream much more as an artist - you remember your dreams in the morning, and there are periods in your life that for one month or two months you don't remember any dreams.
No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and knowing nothing about Picasso, I had the audacity to knock on his door, became his friend, and took thousands of photographs, of him, his studios, his life and his friends.
I had long periods where I couldn't make things happen, and then periods of enormous good luck. I guess the trick is to keep going in the periods when you're not lucky, when your stars are not aligned.
In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?