“Franz Schulze’s book “Fantastic Images” had a lot of impact on me. Mark Pascale turned me on to that book when I was twenty years old. It was really interesting to see all this art in one place and to have somebody articulate a theory of Chicago art since I already had a real predilection towards Dada and Surrealism. Chicago is just teeming with kooky, whacked-out artists, and I’m one of them in my own sedate way.”

“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way." - Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918”

“Art books are filled with interesting images. And that’s cool and all, but I look more for the nudes.”

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

“I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized I couldn’t find books that took me to all the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.”

“I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally.”