Success is a worn down pencil.

There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting.

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.

The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

I've not been cursed with talent, which could be a great inhibitor.

An empty canvas is full.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.

player: Can I reach it with a five iron? caddie: Eventually.

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.

In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

Character is the aim of true education; and science, history, and literature are but means used to accomplish this desired end.

Never quit politicking and never underestimate your opponent.

The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom - in other words, a rigorous discipline-enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness.

Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.

I want people to know that I'm a force to be reckoned with.