I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.

Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression

Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.

In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.

One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

If you get an image try to destroy it.

I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.

I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture and supercharge it in some way… what is more important is a feeling of strength in reserve – tension beneath calm.

If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry "Help!

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

I've worked really hard, but I know people who have worked even harder but didn't have the chances I've had.

It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth.

My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

To be a very, very minor, eighth-tier celebrity, you realize, 'Hey, celebrities are just like us.'

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

For me, there is nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theater about a movie.