A picture lives by companionship. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling.

To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.

There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.

The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees

A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.

There is more power in telling little than in telling all.

If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom.

The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture.

You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm.

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.

„Life is a beautiful denial to belief in death”.

Home, I think. But it's nowhere I can go back to.

When does life start? When does it end? Who makes these decisions?... Every day, in hospitals and homes and hospices... people are struggling with those profound issues.

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

The hardest thing for me is crying. Where I'm from, it's been instilled in me since I was little that men don't cry. Thank God for teardrops and menthol.

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

There is no sin that God cannot pardon. All we need to do is ask for forgiveness

If everyone thinks you're doing the right thing, then everyone would be doing it. Have a controversial strategy.

The dream didn't fade as dreams usually do upon waking.