My short attention span has allowed me a life of diversity in work and place.
There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk.
I like the brooding man - a brooding man with a sense of humor.
It's almost impossible to reconcile the realities of how one feels during the day, hour by hour. But I approach things not cynically.
My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.
On my desk, I always have a lemon or a lime drying. I love the fragrance. Also, a Staedtler eraser, a brush for the eraser and a pencil sharpener.
My workspace is defined by books, ephemera, quiet and light. I don't have a computer, telephone or a fax machine there.
In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.
I don't listen to the news. I don't read the newspaper unless it's eccentric information - and the obituaries, of course.
I'm in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I'm sure that it's going to be a complete disaster. I'm going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet Earth.
I don't like plots. I don't know what a plot means. I can't stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning - you know, 'beginning, middle and end.'
I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.
I like Thomas Jefferson, though he intimidated me. I thought he would have been very tough to be around. I don't know if he had such a sense of humor.
I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten.
The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It's an unending source of visuals and ideas.
