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

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.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

Necessity does the work of courage.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

More firm and sure the hand of courage strikes, when it obeys the watchful eye of caution.

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

Ronald Reagan's well documented final battles with Alzheimer's disease were fought with the same conviction and courage that his many public battles were fought.

On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.