“It’s through discipline and tremendous disappointment and failure that you arrive at what it is you must paint.”

I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect – completely removed in fact – even as we ourselves are.

The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimise themselves in favour of the ideal. But I just can’t. You see, my paintings are not cool.

What we really want to do is serve happiness. We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment. We want the animals to be happy.

What I say is that we’re capable of a transcendent response, and I think it makes us happy. And I do think beauty produces a transcendent response.

Any material may be used but the theme is the same and the response is the same for all artwork.

Once he sees this fact his feet are on the path. If you want to know the truth you will know it.

Happiness is being on the beam with life – to feel the pull of life

My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They’re just horizontal lines.

When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

Fulfill your potential. That’s the way to happiness.

I used to meditate until I learned to stop thinking.

Beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern.

Anything can be painted without representation.

It’s not about facts, it’s about feelings. It’s about remembering feelings and happiness.

There’s not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.

I paint with my back to the world

The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously.

Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.

You must personally accept the responsibility of improving your own life.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

I must remind the right honourable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.

The writer must hew the phantom rock.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there? If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.