“I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.”

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.

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 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.

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

It’s not just about looking and copying, it’s about feeling too.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

I can only listen to what I’m working on, at the time. I can’t listen to anything else because I don’t want to copy it.

It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, ‘Don’t play like me, play like you.’

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

How I can’t find a physical copy to my own shit.

You can copy someone else’s paper but you’ll never know how you arrived at your answer. 

If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.