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.

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.

I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is.

A closed door really is an open door in disguise.

...the/ supreme end-result of/ early Gothic phallic forms/ is the skyscraper & the/ oil drill & powered/ compressor & pistons of/ great engines...

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public.

I guess anyone with a beautiful body, man or woman, loves to be looked at, but to admit such a thing is a little rough at times. That's why it's hard to get people to pose.

Steak is delicious and cows are stupid.

It's as if all identity has been stolen from them, except their identity as slaves.

It's easier to see children as mini adults than it is to imagine or to remember what it is to be a child again.

I'm probably a monster-of-the-week guy, and that comes back down to my old favorite show, which as a kid was always Scooby-Doo.

There's this whole sense of judgment and who's right and who's wrong and who's moral and who's going to be punished.

I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.