Art is about paying attention.
Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.
It's good to take a longer view and think, what would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?
The world is a strange and wonderful place.
Don't be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you're not afraid of anyone.
History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.
I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.
Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words.
Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.
When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are.
Last night, I had that dream again. I dreamt I had to take a test, in a Dairy Queen, on another planet.
If I'm confused, I just spend some time looking at the sky and falling into it. It's not a meditation that anyone taught me, it's something I've done my whole life, and liked doing, and it made me feel like nothing.
I'm not usually where I think I am. It's kind of spooky.
I think illusion is one of the most interesting things that I've found to think about. Just look at yesterday, and what you were doing, and how important it was, and how nonexistent it is now! How dreamlike it is! Same thing with tomorrow. So where are we living?
If you're a young artist, wondering what to call yourself, consider 'multimedia artist.' It's so vague. Then, no one can say, 'Hey, how come you're a jazz person, and you're making a pop opera?
You know the reason I love the stars is because we can't hurt them: we can't burn them, we can't melt them , we can't make them overflow, we can't flood them or burn them up—so we keep reacing for them
As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.
Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.
People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret.
People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for.
. . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.
When you follow your thoughts and watch them attach to certain things, it makes certain things real and other things unreal, and you realize that this is all created by your mind.
You can do great things with low-tech stuff.
Dogs don't just like us, they love us, and they admire us. The big reason they admire us is we invented cars. They're like, "Yes, we get to go somewhere!" Go somewhere faster, with their head out the window, and their ears, like, "Yes! Yes!"
