I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species.

Lack of knowledge leads to rejection by God.

In the beginning God made the seas, the mountains, the heavens, and buffalo knees. He made lilies, and dew drops, and snail shells, and roses, and dippers, and yappers, and snappers, and noses.

Never say never or it becomes a vice, and there you have it, you just did it twice.

Water. Like a blanket. Dark. Intoxicating. Cold.

Knowledge is a collective enterprise. Without it understanding is impossible. Ignorance is too often a murderous vulnerability.

I don't really lift weights. It's kind of a vanity thing that I don't get into.

I always find the greatest help I receive is from people who have been where I have been, but now they're no longer there.

I would say, if you're buying less expensive clothes, buy two sizes bigger. They'll hang better.

The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.

When you’re truly connecting with wisdom, the more you learn, the more you realize the less you know.