For me, the heyday was in 1959. It was before the Ferus Gallery moved across the street, in the days when Ed Kienholz and Walter Hopps ran it. At that time, art was taken very seriously in terms of being an artist, and not as a profession.

The art from the East is influenced by nature and touch. That comes from being more attuned to the environment.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

I'm from a country where acting is taken very seriously; it's a very serious profession.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.