“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 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.

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.

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

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

The essence of patriotism lies in a willingness to sacrifice for one’s country, just as true greatness finds expression, not in blessings enjoyed, but in good bestowed.

All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.

Intuition is a method of feeling one’s way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.

Thought cannot conceive of anything that may not be brought to expression. He who first uttered it may be only the suggester, but the doer will appear.

What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression ‘This is my Body’ means this is myself.

If you have a point of view regarding my style of work, keep it to yourself. You are not entitled to express your opinion.