In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself.

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by.

I'm always trying to do things that no one has ever seen before.

I tell young people that the greatest paintings in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil smeared on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's ear. It's that simple.

I was probably born with the ability to draw, but that does not make you an artist.

Whenever I got a new studio I made the largest possible painting, and since the ceiling was low, the painting became horizontal. As I changed studios and got larger spaces, I made bigger paintings.

If you are close to it, a big painting is just a feeling around you, that's all.

It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means.

I went to the University of Minnesota, and I met this amazing artist named Cameron Boothe there who was in World War I, who studied with Hans Hoffman in Munich.

What a difference it makes to come home to a child!

Mistake is the masterpiece.

I would rather live a life alone, than live a life based on lies, deceit and manipulation

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.

We need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.

The more excited the rooster gets, the higher his voice goes. He's got a little bit of a Barney Fife quality to him.

By the time the Oscars are on I'll be seventy. How many more chances am I going to have to get nominated for an Oscar?

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.