J.F.Johns Quotes

I wrote... Neon Ballroom in that time where I hated music, really everything about it, I hated it.

Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness- happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

None of us are really dumb and none of us are really smart. We're in the middle.

Bend color names which should be made of neon or copper tubing. Place an object on a surface - trace the object - then bend the object - leaving some part of it attached.

One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides.

You should avoid hedging, at least that's what I think. You should be ashamed to die until you've made some contribution to mankind.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

If you see a good fight, get in it.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

You say that money isn't everything, well I'd like to see you live without it.

One works without thinking how to work.

We look at it as the multiverse. We have our TV universe and our film universe, but they all co-exist.

God made man, and then said I can do better than that and made woman.

It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

Yes, I am old enough to grow a beard actually. So ner-ner-ner-ner

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

It is good to be the possessor of some mountain-top experience.

Overcoming fear doesn't have to be skydiving, if you're afraid of heights. Overcoming fear is an everyday thing. We do it all day long.

Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

I have meant what I have done. Or I have often meant what I have done. Or I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or I have tried to mean what I was doing.

Took me by the hand, she's gonna love me in my Chevy Van.

I tend to like things that already exist.

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

When you work you learn something about what you are doing and you develop habits and procedures out of what you're doing.

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

You see, money isn't everything - I know it sounds corny but I really mean it - success means a lot more.

There are no big groupie fans or anything.

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

I think every writer doubts themselves, every day. You procrastinate because you're afraid. You're always afraid it's not going to be as good as you want it to be.

So I went and visited a doctor and he diagnosed me with reactive arthritis.

I may not be smart enough to do everything, but I am dumb enough to try anything.

Woman's work as a listener is never done. ... I thought I'd spent too much of my life listening for some damn man - for my father and now for my husband.

I start sweating and shaking and having panic attacks if I am not at home.

One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.

I am very scared of being outside my home for long periods of time.

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.

There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them, just to make the music more of a sanctuary.

Happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky.

Touring doesn't kill me and I can handle it.

I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

I get very anxious and am scared in crowds and things like that.

Everybody is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

I'm lucky the arthritis happened at the time that it did because of the record.