Barbara Rose: In all your imagery, there is no death. ......

Barbara Rose: In all your imagery, there is no death. ... It���s interesting that in all your years of producing new directions in your art, you have never gotten into death imagery. Is that something you ever think about?

Robert Rauschenberg: Not often. I have always said that life has nothing to do with death. They���re two separate things, and that���s the way it ought to be. If that���s innocent, so be it. Innocence is not like virginity. Virginity you can only have once. Innocence you have to nourish every day.

Rauschenberg, interviewed (cited here)