“People mistake the character of line for the character of art. But it’s really the position of line that’s important, or the position of anything, any contrast, not the character of it.”

We like to think of industrialization as being despicable.

Im not really sure what social message my art carries, if any.

Use the worst colour you can find in each place – it usually is the best.

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about.

All of it had an impact – as did happenings – because I could see that art was changing from expressionism, which I was doing at the time, or thought I was doing. But it wasn’t the direction I really wanted to go.

Pop Art is industrial painting.

Painting stems from a sense of organisation, the sensed positions of contrasts. Not that it is about this.

There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We’re using those things – but we’re not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesnt look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

Usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes.

Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there’s another purpose to it.

I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.

And I dont really want it to carry one. Im not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way.

I’m never drawing the object itself; I’m only drawing a depiction of the object – a kind of crystallized symbol of it.

There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Mir? and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.

But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.

One of the absolute rules I learned in the war was, don’t know anything you don’t need to know, because if you ever get caught they will get it out of you.

What use is revelation or religion if it doesnt change anything?

I don’t have to explain anything to anybody.

And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that’s the trouble.

Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you’re doing something.

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.

And I think you sort of switch on their brain, man, so that makes them say: ‘Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.’ Whoooooo! It’s life.