“I am happy to be alive, as long as I can paint.”

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?

I want to be inside your darkest everything.

My toys were those of a boy: skates, bicycles.

Mankind owns its destiny, and its destiny is the earth. We are destroying it until we have no destiny.

I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls.

I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.

I am in agreement with everything my father taught me and nothing my mother taught me.

The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes.

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.

Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I’m home.

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.

And perhaps the greatest paradox of all is how we stand here, fully wounded yet never more alive.

The things that made me feel dead, made me feel alive again.

And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.

As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else’s.

You made my non-existent perfect fall apart and unfold gently in the arms of your pure acceptance. Imperfections that became alive, then anything that’s ever been known as beautiful.

Hatred’s the fuel that keeps me alive.