“To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.”

“It's personal freedom, not hundred dollar bills that lights the soul's cigar.”

“The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.”

“The function of the artist,' the Navajo answered, 'is to provide what life does not.”

“If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.”

“Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we’re all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.”

“Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”