I had been working purely abstractly for so long, it was important for me to see whether I was working abstractly because I couldn't work any other way, or whether I was doing it out of choice.

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.

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.

I used to think that divorce meant failure, but now I see it more as a step along the path of self-realization and growth.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

It is time to cease to argue about God , and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry.

The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception.

Public work does not cut into personal creativity. They are streams from the same river but with different destinations.

It was just something normal in my family to play sports. It wasn't necessarily forced on us. It was just something we enjoyed.

Motherhood is heart-exploding, blissful hysteria.

I wrote when I did not know life; now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written; life can only be lived.

What Donald Trump is focused on is a policy of trade that looks after the interests of the American worker, not just the overall GDP numbers. And that is what is resonating.

Congress can grant a waiver [for General James Mattis ] and has done that once in history.