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Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.

You just have to know that the more successful you get as an artist, the less of a normal life you have. It's a trade-off.

I make a good living and I've never looked at myself as being an artiste.

If you want to devote yourself to the arts, you'd better do it strictly from passion, because there is zero guarantee that you'll get anywhere. The hardest thing is dealing with business people who have nothing to do with your art. They could care less that you're up at 4:30 in the morning writing a joke. Don't expect any sympathy from anybody.

I think it's harder than ever to be an artist. I think that you end up, especially as a middle-aged person, you pay such big consequences for saying, 'I'm just going to devote my life to making art,' or 'I'm going to devote my life to writing novels.' You end up with no resources.

My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That's what it was driven by for sure.

I can't really see myself as an artist. Now, to step out here and there, do it when I feel like it, that's a possibility. But for me to be a full-fledged, full-time artist in the industry, I don't think so.

Coming out of college with a degree in fine arts and painting isn't worth much any more.

I feel like I became an artist by default. I went to art college, but my interest was always more towards film than painting or sculpture.

If you really want to be an artist, you search yourself, and you find a lot of it comes from earlier times. I have pretty much built the work around my experiences. When I've moved from one place to another, the work has changed.