"He who listens to his inner voice instead of the cries and clamor of the market,
he who has the courage to teach others what his heart has taught him,
will always be original."

                   — Ludwig Börne
 

“More people are allowing artists to do murals on their buildings. I think it’s because of the whole MOCA street art exhibit. People gained more appreciation for it. It wasn’t that way before. But nowadays it seems like everybody wants some of that, and it’s getting more visible. Like this last mural I did, everything was legit. I had a permit from the city. It was pretty impressive. Times are changing right there.”

"What’s crazy to me is that’s how we experience the world — not by actually being present and taking in the information, but by comparing the information to other information that’s already in our brain, and it limits our sight and understanding a lot of times."

“I have a grandmother. She’s very sweet. She’s always like, ‘One day I’m gonna see you on Good Morning America.’ I’m like, ‘Ok Gran, keep livin’! I’m gonna try to catch up with that dream you got for me.’”

“I remember being really frustrated with color crayons when I was small—that they didn’t do things you wanted them to do. I remember I saw a play of The Happy Prince in kindergarten and I tried to draw his gold armor with crayons, and I had brown and I had orange, and it didn’t work.” [laughs]

"As soon as I wake up there’s gotta be music. Most people have coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I just need music in my headphones to get me started."

“You know that this painting you did touched someone so much and helped them. Like I said, I’ve had really caring parents and wonderful friends. They’ve always taken care of me, so I kind of want to give that impact to other people.”

"To see someone on stage who only sings and presses buttons on a computer, where’s the risk? There’s no way to get it wrong – unless your computer crashes. What do you do if it crashes? They probably have a backup. Another computer." [laughs]

“I had a few great teachers growing up and in music school. I was lucky to learn the lesson that no one can be better at being you than you, and because of that I developed an awareness of the difference between innovation and imitation.”

“It’s about keeping an open heart, a clear mind, and being thankful. But I think it’s hard to be that person all the time. It’s something we have to work at. In the morning I might just try to say something to get my head in the right place, or think about what I’m thankful for. There’s always something to be thankful for.”

“I get a lot of inspiration from the landscape out here in Brooklyn. Symbolically speaking it’s just got so many layers of paint and stuff, or just layers of grime, even. It’s like all those layers suggest some era gone by.”

“Acquiring more skill, at let’s say drawing, is not about that latest new drawing as much as the new drawing is the latest understanding and experience of one single drawing that the artist has been making his whole life.”

“I try my best to work in different media, not just painting. I love doing sculptures and recently I’ve been trying to incorporate installations when I showcase my work. I think people enjoy seeing a variety of work from one creator.”

“I studied a little bit of English when I was a kid and my dad thought I was pretty good at it. He was hoping I could be a translator, working for the government or something like that. But he wasn’t expecting me to be a painter, no.”

"As much as I respected a lot of my friends who just full-force said, 'I’m only gonna do art, forget it if I don’t have a job, I’m gonna make it...' I didn’t want to put that burden on my artwork. I wanted to paint whatever I wanted to."

“Memory fascinates me. All you need is something to trigger a memory, and then you get it. But it was always there. It could be something you haven’t thought about for years and I don’t know, it could be anything, a sound, that could trigger that whole memory.”

“YouTube, that’s a total folk tradition right now. I mean, someone puts something up and then you have 40 videos of other people doing that same video; their version of that video. It’s like folk performance art.”

"Art takes so much time. You dream about what you want to do, and then to make it happen it’s going to take multiple experiments and...a lifetime. You have to be crazy about it. For me, that’s what it is. I’m in love with curiosity. That’s what keeps it exciting."

"You can tell a lot about a musician by the way they let other people do their solos. Music is about the live performance."

"After a project like this, it's like going to class and having a degree. It really changed our way of working and the way we envisage words and the power of words."

"Sometimes people say 'Oh your lyrics, they're kind of vague and I don't really always know what you're talking about'. And I say that's good, because if it's poetic then it can't be explained. Poetry can't be explained, otherwise it's no longer poetry."

"My father played the guitar and my mother was a dancer. We would play on boxes, or dump clothes out of a drawer and use the drawer as percussion. I grew up in the middle of all this history."

"When I came to the states I had to leave everything and start from zero. So the fact that you are able to do that is a wonderful relief. It's a very tough journey. I didn't become an artist because I wanted to be famous, or wealthy. I didn't see an alternative for me."

"People can do fantastic things, really. Even some people with very little experience. If you trust them and they trust you and you tell them to really go for it, they can really blossom and it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to do that."

a thousand stories