I never wish for critics.

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

I tend to like things that already exist.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.

I never wish for critics.

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

One works without thinking how to work.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

I am not strong on perfection.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

Young people are being elected for School Boards all over the country.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

One of the reasons the doctors gave for hospitalizing me against my will was that I was 'gravely disabled.' To support this view, they wrote in my chart that I was unable to do my Yale Law School homework. I wondered what that meant about much of the rest of New Haven.

Almost any sect cult or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

We Egyptians reject any kind of assault or insult against our prophet.

Mamas, don't let your sons grow up to be Cowboys... or Oilers.

The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.

Having kids has been great for me. I have two beautiful step- kids, as well as my own new daughter. They've really helped me to keep my feet firmly on the ground, and life is good. I feel like I'm the luckiest guy here.

It makes sense that there is no sense without God.

As an actor, if you were to simplify what acting really is, it's about letting go.

My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books.

There's a great tradition among the English of writing about Berlin. It's kind of a state of mind, almost. That even translates in terms of music. A lot of people go to Berlin with the idea that it's a state of mind.

I've gotta be the only father begging his son to leave a six-figure job to go play in a rock n' roll band!

Anytime you get to work with an actor who is beyond you in experience and talent, I feel like they make you a better actor. You really bring up your game.

So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.