I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time.

When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.

For most people, language is our primary interface with each other and with the external world.

Stop seeking advice from bitter people, because they would for the most part contribute to making your situation worse.

I grew up in New York, I love New York.

But protagonists are protagonists and heroes are heroes.

Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.

The biggest lesson I learned in the bar business is to focus on revenues. Dollars, not dimes.

I've always had a strange fear of spoons.

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.

I think of writers as explorers, not necessarily as detectives. So there is certainly detecting that is going on - they're explorers.