I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions.

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.

Don't seek a failure-less life. Wear failure as a badge of honour. Seek a fearless life !

The peacemaker must have the strongest heart and the toughest will in the room.

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.

We dont offer you any solutions necessarily but we definitely offer you a minute to escape.

I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press?

Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial To my proportion'd strength.

We are a species addicted to a stories.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

I've got to take a break, to be honest. I'm not even going to lie.