Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.

I met David Smith through my former wife, Cornelia, who'd studied with him.

I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.

In the '50s Morris Louis and I were not known, David Smith and Helen Frankenthaler were not much known.

For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything.

Usually I throw away what I don't get right the first time.

Because of this the representation I'm interested in is of those things only the eye can touch.

I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

Context begins with other artists - seniors and mentors.

Pollock was well known, certainly, but for all the wrong reasons. He was known as much for being wild and unconventional in his working methods as for being a great artist.

The scene then as now was centered in New York. For the most part, I've kept a bit apart from that attractive and seductive city. I've done it by living in the country within commuting distance.

With artists of my own generation there was at first no group identity - and never a clique.

As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.

Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.

I am for 100 per cent Americanism, 100 per cent efficiency, and 100 per cent life. I expect to live to be 100 years old.

I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amazing athlete.

Boredom is the fear of self.

At the end of the day, I'm fighting for the things I said I'd fight for.

I'm very insecure.

Our political machine, composed of thirteen independent sovereignties, have been perpetually operating against each other and against the federal head ever since the peace.

The atheist has no hope.

I wouldn't trade those 10 years for anything. The Navy taught me a lot of things. It molded me as a man, and I made a lot of wonderful friends.

Good actors are a dime a dozen, but I want actors that are gonna be part of my team and collaborative.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

If you grew up, and you never had a computer, and you've never used the Internet, and someone asked you if you wanted to buy a data plan, your response would be 'What's a data plan, and why would I want to use this?'

Not every child learns the same way. I could not learn through my eyes. Reading was impossible. Math, to compute it in my mind, was impossible. I learned everything through listening.

You know, an audition usually is you come in and read the scene and if you're lucky, you get to read it twice.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

He that slays shall be slain.

When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.

Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century.

I've always been a DVD geek and, before that, a laser disc fanatic, too.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

When in life do you get a black and white printout that says this is what you should do? It just doesn't happen.

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Your weak point is the open, vulnerable place where you can always be hurt. Love, in all its aspects, opens the self so fully.