Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.

Koch frames political negotiation as a creative vocation: where artists compose with paint or words, he composes with agreements. The comparison elevates dealmaking from mere transactional politics to a craft requiring imagination, timing, and an eye for structure—assembling disparate interests into a workable whole. The emphasis on “big deals” signals a preference for consequential, city-shaping outcomes over symbolic gestures, and “that’s how I get my kicks” underscores the personal drive and pleasure he takes in bargaining and coalition-building. Read this way, the line is both a self-portrait of a pragmatic, results-oriented politician and a defense of compromise as an energizing, even noble, form of public work.