Painters From The United States

"Consequence, you'll see, will be stranger than a gang of drunken mimes."

"You think that you're on the brink? The shit hasn't even begun to hit the fan."

"It seems as though I'm going nowhere really fucking fast."

"Will I ever get to where I'm going? If I do, will I know when I'm there? If the wind blew me in the right direction, Would I even care? I would."

"Maybe if I looked in my heart, I could find a back door."

"the day you were born, you were born free. That is your privilege."

"I'm born, I'm alive, I breathe, In a moment or two I realize, That the sphere upon which I reside Is asleep on its feet, Should I go back to sleep?"

"Your tangerine of electricity is ripe and on a vine!"

"Society must let the artist go, to wander off into their nebula."

"When we get there, We're going to fly so far away Making sure to laugh while we experience Anti-gravity."

"Too bad the things that make you mad are my favorite things."

"You've been raised in limitation, but that glove never fit quite right."

"I think I grew a grey watching you procrastinate!"

"Can someone please explain to me your ever-present lack of speed?"

"We don't know much about him. We do know that he came from a sperm meeting an egg. Actually, his name is Charles Mulholland. We don't know what he does, but he sure looks like he knows something."

"I learned from a very young age that if I pursued the things that truly excited me, that they would reward in more important ways, like happiness"

"Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing-we're domesticated apes with a microphone."

"Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about."

"The girl I find who wants to talk about quantum theory in a bar is the one I want to marry."

"She is a girl so I wouldn’t slap her. I would lock her in a room full of spiders and let her think about what she’s doing to the youth of America."

"We have all the elements of being the worst band in the world: a bass player who’s got some slap-bass shit, heavy riff guitars, a DJ scratching on the songs, a crazy drummer, and a singer who’s in touch with his feminine side. Even our band name is the worst name ever: it evokes imagery of ‘Incubus’ in death-metal writing, with bullet belts across our chests."

"You can't make me think like you, mundane."

"On the surface you hate, but you know you need me."

"I'm sick of limiting myself to fit your definition."

"Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink, Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides. Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now? You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes?"

"In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity."

"I need a new pair of shoes : I need a new shiny car : I need to buy until I fry : I can not name what I'm trying to : I want my cock an inch bigger : I want new, flawless tits : I'm not enough as I was made, please complete my partial mind : I want my money back, this product has a hole."

"To think that one's actions could please the masses is indeed a notion bound in irony; someone will inevitably find something wrong in almost everything. So do what it is that you do best and remember to have enough tolerance for two."

"I think perhaps love thrives on unlikely circumstance and chance : life thrives on these principles, and is life not love? And love not life?"

"I was on an airplane last year when a talk show began playing on the TVs. I decided to start narrating for the people, which is a really great game if you're ever bored enough. I realized a time will probably come when television will watch us if we're watching it, if that hasn't already happened, figuratively or literally. It sounded like some sort of pseudo-Big Brother nightmare, so I wrote it down."

"Lyrically speaking, I know that there were a lot of things going on in and around the world and there were some very specific people in my mind coming dangerously close to having megolomaniacal tendancies and so I did my best to write those thoughts down.""

"I attribute a scab to the present state of society. The way the scab looks in its worst state is gross and chaotic and horrible, that's now, but when it breaks away, there's a brand new piece of skin that's stronger than before. It's like creation out of chaos."

"I was in a bookstore, browsing through an old Life magazine, when I saw a picture of what the article called spontaneous human combustion. There were an old guy's legs and shoes, perfectly intact...then, right around his knee area, was just a pile of charred ashes. I was going through some turmoil in my life, both good and bad, and the image struck a chord, so...I wrote a song about it."

"If I forgot some stuff, please excuse me; I ate the brown acid at Woodstock '69 and can scarcely remember my own name."

"Jose just got a tattoo of an ass tattooed on his ass the other day. It's actually quite fascinating. Confusing, but fascinating. When you come to the show, ask him about it. He'll show you."

"Morning View is I think collectively probably our favorite record that we have made as a band because it was the most effortless... um... in its conception... you know? It was a lot less slaving over parts and trying to just get together in this big beautiful room with a view of the ocean and parts and sounds and melodies and lyrics would just happen... they would just sort of spill out of us without us really trying... so to me that's sort of the most amazing way to write music or do any kind of art, which is by letting it happen... but one of the most important parts in any sort of.. uh... journey so to speak.. Is uh... the ride... and we've had a really good time riding to where ever it is we are going... and I don't even think any of us know particularly where it is going to take us... But it's been really fun sort of chasing it."

"When we're making music together, it's like five men making love-in a very platonic sense. It's very erotic, because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."

"She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence."

"The birth and inauguration of the generic telegraph has not only opened a new field for the labors, and given direction to the ingenuity of the mechanician, suggesting numerous varieties of form and distribution of parts, but it has also give a fresh impulse to the researches of the philosopher into the mysteries of the most efficient agent, electricity. It has been the servant of the astronomer; it has assisted in the determination of longitudes; ... it has promoted the science of meteorology, and been tributary in many ways to the advancement of our knowledge of terrestrial phenomena. ..."

"What hath God wrought?"

"Gary LaCoste had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out."

"I'll never have enough time to paint all the pictures I'd like to."

"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller."

"The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back."

"The View of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and the ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be. (Somebody once said that I paint the kind of girls your mother would want you to marry.)"

"I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic didn't mushroom and envelope the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive."

"A startling presence, both vocally and visually... Off the cuff, like the whole '60's were off the cuff. An Oscar Wilde in drag who combined insight and sarcasm that was sometimes light, sometimes dark. A provocateur."

"If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there."

"Janis knew more than I did about "how it was", but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. On the various occasions when we were together, she seemed to be holding in something she thought I might not want to hear, like older people do when they hear kids they love saying with absolute youthful confidence, "Oh, that'll never happen to me." Sometimes you know you can't tell them how it is, they have to find out for themselves. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom. Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough."

"Loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both."