“I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.”

If I’m away from painting for a week, I get bored.

I try to think about life.

I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I wanted to build up a name for myself.

Believe it or not, I can actually draw.

There are about 30 words around you all the time, like ‘thread’ or ‘exit.’

The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.

I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.

If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you’ve got to realize that influence is not influence. It’s simply someone’s idea going through my new mind.

Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.

Fire will attract more attention than any other cry for help.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don’t think about art while I work.

I don’t think about art when I’m working. I think about life.

I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.

My favorite Twombly is ‘Apollo and the Artist,’ with the big ‘Apollo’ written across it.

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

It is awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.

Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

It is easy to love people when they smell good, but sometimes they slip into the manure of life and smell awful. You must love them just as much when they smell foul.

I’m going to be an awful driver.

The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

This wine is awful. Get me another glass.

To live would be an awfully big adventure.