Being Billy Apple

Television (Excerpts) – 2007

As I say, I don't do works that are candy for the eye. My work is about the mind — It always has been. When we first started in 1960 it wasn't called conceptual art because it wasn't around, but I use the word 'ideas' constantly. My work's about ideas.
– Billy Apple, in an interview on website Studio International, 17 October 2018

If I'm successful I'll appoint people to be Billy Apple. Like Calvin Klein has all these good-looking guys and girls, you know. And I'd be the same way.
– Billy Apple proposes a way he can avoid being seen on-screen in Being Billy Apple

I read avidly books on marketing and all sorts of things ... I was drawn to smart advertising because they somehow had a way of talking to people in a way that you would never forget. You still know, when you hear a great commercial or read an ad, that has some fantastic lines that are burnt into my brain ... I didn't work in advertising, but I used the systems of advertising to do my work.
– Billy Apple in a 2009 interview with Radio New Zealand