If you stare at an object, as you do when you paint, there is no point at which you stop learning things from it.

If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective

Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen.

I think of myself as a beginner. Sometimes that's the whole joy. If you could just do it, there'd be no point in doing it.

I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove.

Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.

Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom.

I'm not just interested in the pictorial aspects of the landscape - see a pretty place and try to paint it - but in some way to manage it, manipulate it, or see what I can turn it into.

Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.

Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.

Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea that things do not change.

A historian can never claim to have the last word on anything as he is limited by his sources and further so by his viewpoint.

At the very basic level all people are creators. We are all creating at every moment.

Letting go means wanting to move on so you can live.

the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

I really think I like poisonous snakes.

My personal philosophy would be don't whine, don't let opportunities pass you by, be willing to work hard, and remember that you don't know as much as you think you do, ever

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

Rather than Surrender to Bureaucracy, take it upon yourself to break it

It seemed like whatever I touched, I was breaking record after record. I just knew I was on. I completely destroyed all existing shooting records there - an omen of things to come.