Anyone who is an artist or writer comes up against a reality in which their work is judged in relationship to all the other work being made, and as a result you somehow get placed into a category—by other people, by institutions, by whom you know, by what school you attended. All of these things accrue to your value. We often look to the exceptions, and they supposedly make the rule, but in fact, the rule is that one usually doesn’t become a major art star, one usually doesn’t become a bestseller. Making art of any kind puts you in an ambiguous position, because even if you win every award in the world, it doesn’t mean that your work is great. It can be very self-defeating as an artist to think about value.

Lynne Tillman