Laurie Simmons

“My father was a dentist. And my mother was a - do we still say 'housewife'? A home engineer.”

“I think the art world is one of the last bastions of this kind of sexism where there is a mythology about a woman not being able to be both and artist and a mother: that some very important creative crystal inside a woman would be shattered by the idea of having a child.”

“I think that I came of age in the 1970s with my own work, and it was a time of conceptual and process art, and it was very important not to tell a story. If you told a story, when I was a young artist and first came to N.Y., it was, like, an embarrassing way to make art.”

“Parenthetically, I have to say, I don't particularly like dolls, nor have I ever liked them.”

“I've always gone for a kind of perfection.”

“I was always very proud of myself that I could wrest emotion from a doll or a puppet. It never occurred to me that I could find real emotion in a person.”

“I think, with my own daughters, rather than preaching a feminine agenda, I just really try to help them understand what it meant to be a woman in the late 20th century and the consciousness of how to be a woman in the 21st century: What is working for you and what is working against you.”

“I don't like touching things that are the curatorial flavor of the month.”

“When I had my first show at Artists Space in 1979, I imagined my life like game show. There were two doors: one door had a big dollar sign on it, and the other just had sort of a blurry picture of a newspaper - the money door or the critical response and acclaim door.”

“It's funny: when you're an artist, your own work goes in and out of fashion with you.”

“I always say I'm an artist with the soul of a realtor.”

“I'm innately conservative, and painting is an ideal place to exercise a progressive conservatism. I operate well within limits.”

“Who knew that being an artist was a glamour job?”

“My subject has always been women. And I don't want to sound, like, preposterously idealistic, but I would like, in my lifetime, to experience a world where women, all kind of women, can connect and support each other.”

“My career has been a slow burn with many peaks and valleys.”

“I had grown up in a world dominated by women - I had aunts and sisters and great-aunts - and I just felt like I lived in a completely female world.”

“Your ringtone is so personal to you, but the fact is millions of other people have your ringtone. I really love that connection, and call me crazy, but I find the iPhone ringtones super melodic and very danceable.”

“Like all artists, I'm a complete cinephile; I see everything. I see past movies, present movies, indie movies, experimental movies.”

“I love acting. I can't believe how fun it is and how in-the-zone I am when I'm doing it.”

“I've always written about other artists, or I write my thoughts down, but I've never written a story.”