“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.”

The days you work are the best days.

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something – anything I had done – than anyone else I know.

I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

Anyone who doesn’t feel the crosses simply doesn’t get that country.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.

I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

As an actor, it’s very interesting to make the audience love you while you are doing horrendous things.

I want to make sure I am still here to make sure my two young [sons] become men.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.

I came here with the perfect chemist’s perception. The formula they had was perfect and any added ingredient could make it go bad or worse.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.

You learn real early to make a film and then duck, and basically that’s how I go about it.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.