“So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.”

That’s an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are.

I like the idea of the museum world and the university-academic situation where artists talk to each other or where artists or art students study with artists.

There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.

If some student came up and wanted to know where to study painting, you’d want to suggest someplace, but there’s no place. I wouldn’t know where to send a student to study.

The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more

Making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive – non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.

I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace.

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea… The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

I want to emphasize the idea of black as intellectuality and conventionality.

My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.

As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.

As for a picture, if it isn’t worth a thousand words, the hell with it.

The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

Every little deed counts.

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine.

My business is to enjoy and have fun. And why not, if in the end everything will end, right?

If I had one day when I didn’t have to be all confused and didn’t have to feel that I was ashamed of everything. If I felt that I belonged someplace. You know?

He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.

When everything is together – the band, me, the audience, it’s boss! It’s just like magic.

If you’re not afraid, if you take everything you are, everything worthwhile in you and direct it at one goal, one ultimate mark, you’ve got to get there.