Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

Making art is like swimming underwater in a blindfold.

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

No high-minded painter of the last fifty years has been able to come to terms with his art without coming to terms with the problem of cubism.

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime / I'll place, instead, / green citrus fruit / upon my head.

Always let intuitive perception precede analysis.

Postmodernism is Modernism with Alzheimer's.

Writing about art is only useful when it leads to the experience of art.

When you are painting a landscape, assume the painting is real and the landscape is an illusion.

Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

Democracy is an illusion in which we all believe.

Being funny, in some ways, is about being connected to psychology.

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

People come up to me and tell me they support me because I never left my principles.

If we can send a guy to the moon we can certainly go a quarter of a mile and not get hurt.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.

A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid, nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class, - too much money, and too few ideas.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.