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.

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 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 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.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

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.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

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.

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

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

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.

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

The days you work are the best days.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

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

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.

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.

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

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.

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

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.

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.

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

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for.

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness if he had it he wouldnt be a good soldier.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it its your world for a moment.

Its not enough to be nice in life. Youve got to have nerve.

Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.