“If one has set for himself the position that his painting shall not misconstrue his personal mode of thinking, then he must be rather alert to just what he does think.”

I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.

It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe, just now, today, for such a reminder.

It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality.

The apprehension of… values is intuitive; but it is not a built-in intuition, not something with which one is born. Intuition in art is actually the result of… prolonged tuition.

Form is the shape of content.

The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn’t have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn’t get as far as Hoboken at that time.

To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.

The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man’s loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.

I’ve been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you.

The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward.

Personal style, be it that of Michelangelo, or that of Tintoretto… has always been that peculiar personal rapport which has developed between an artist and his medium.

Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.

An ametuer is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.

A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.

Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.

Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.

Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending.

I’m suspicious of any mode of transportation that requires a running start.