In mathematics the complicated things are reduced to simple things. So it is in painting.

A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say.

Strain your brain more than your eye.

Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.

The big artist .. . keeps a sharp eye on Nature and steals her tools.

When you first commence painting everything is a muddle. Even the commonest colors seem to have the devil in them.

How beautiful an old woman's skin is! All those wrinkles!

The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.

My honors are misunderstanding, pesecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought.

Enthusiasm for one's goal lessens the disagreeableness of working toward it.

Of course, it is well to go abroad and see the works of the old masters, but Americans... must strike out for themselves, and only by doing this will we create a great and distinctly American art.

I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.

Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

I am really looking forward as I get older and older, to being less and less nice.

Just because he was pretty didn't mean he couldn't be improved by a smack upside the head with a piece of earnest hickory

We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs.

The drive . . . is to create a one world government ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope . . . .

The thought of a comedy with paid prostitutes always seemed so silly and purposeless, for a person hired by me could never take the place of my imagination of a 'cruel mistress'.

Achievement is the entirety of little deliberations, rehashed all the live long day.

Things I Want to Happen After I die: You're allowed to be sad, but you're not allowed to be too sad. If you're always sad when you think about me, then how can you remember me? —Sam McQueen