When I Was A Little Boy, I

In A Lot Of Places In The United States And Certainly Even More Places Around The World, The Image Of The Cowboy Has Become, For Some People, A Negative One. The Word 'cowboy' Implies A Strong, Stubborn Individual Whose Individualism Depends On Pulling Down Other People's Individualism.

Freud Was The Son Of A Jewish Merchant Who Had To Move His Whole Family To Vienna Because He Couldn't Get Work. He, As A Boy, Had To Watch His Father Be Mocked And Abused On The Street For Being Jewish... You Develop A Thick Skin And You Develop A Certain Kind Of Wit To Defend Yourself.

As [john] Tolkien Himself Said, The Story [lord Of The Ring ] Is Not Allegorical. He Said So When People Tried To Make Analogies To World War Ii And The Fight Against Hitler And His Fascist Coalition.

Kids Accept Where They Are Because They Don't Know The Past. They Know What They Have; They Know Where They Are.

My Job As An Artist, As I See It, Is To Understand And In Some Cases To Take On Various Ways Of Thinking About People And The World That Are Different From My Own, Sometimes Radically Different.