I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!

To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.

There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.

The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees

A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.

There is more power in telling little than in telling all.

If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom.

The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture.

You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm.

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.

The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.

'Youth is the time for loving, so poets always say.

I wish I could go to Paris right now.

Do you believe in telepathy? No? Then what are you doing when you pray?

I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am.

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon. Let others say his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.

There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.

The veil between us and the divine is more permeable than we imagine.

Weddings are giant Rorschach tests onto which everyone around you projects their fears, fantasies, and expectations - many of which they've been cultivating since the day you were born.