“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.”

To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.

I said to myself, 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 had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.

Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue – that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.

Marks on paper are free – free speech – press – pictures all go together I suppose.

It was all so far away – there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

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.

If I had ever really ‘faced the facts’ about myself, I never would have reached for even a zillionth of what I’ve managed to accomplish.

When you try to be everything to everyone, you accomplish being nothing to anyone

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Goals, on the other hand, are specific things you have decided you need to accomplish within a clearly defined period of time.

God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.

Columbus real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer.

We must dream so big that without the support that comes through favor with God and man, we could never accomplish what is in our hearts.

Democrats’ attack on the Republican majority leader is nothing but a coordinated agenda to stop an effective leader from accomplishing the people’s business.