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

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.

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.

Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.

People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It’s an unbearable condition.

Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don’t design it, somebody else has to design it.

Before I take my last breath, before my last flower withers, I wish to live, I wish to make love, I wish to be in this world close to those who need me, those who I need.

When you’re trying to make people believe in what you want to do, you have to be really careful to figure out how you’ll make it work, how to maintain the momentum that you’re getting without sacrificing much. It’s a complete learning process.

I just want to do whatever makes me happy…Like being totally conscious. Laughing is, like, my favorite thing to do. Being with friends, having fun…being a bit daft.

The mirror is the tool of the one who wants to do a self-portrait. And if you want to make a photo you need a mirror.

I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers.