Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.

Many art-worlders have an if-you-say-so approach to art: Everyone is so scared of missing out on the next hot artist that it's never clear whether people are liking work because they like it or because other people do. Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses and there are more Joneses than ever.

The New York art world readily proves people wrong. Just when folks say that things stink and flibbertigibbet critics wish the worst on us all because we're not pure enough good omens appear.

Outside museums in noisy public squares people look at people. Inside museums we leave that realm and enter what might be called the group-mind getting quiet to look at art.

Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.

Recessions are hard on people but they are not hard on art.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'

I'm free. I just do what I want say what I want say how I feel and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way and I think people respect that.

Art is so subjective and people can react however they want.

I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience a thought.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing sad as a factory.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex you know in art. There's a lot of naked women and men and there's intrigue there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.

The beginning of a friendship the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.

People are surprised at how down-to-earth I am. I like to stay home on Friday nights and listen to 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism you could remain nonverbal. You don't want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics you wouldn't have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social 'yak yaks.'

I think art education especially in this country which government pretty much ignores is so important for young people.

What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

People who don't like me talk about it as though I'm trash because I have tattoos. I find that insane because it's 2008 not the 1950s. Tattoos aren't limited to sailors. It's a form of art I find beautiful. I love it.

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects and discovering other people's weaknesses.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.