It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically.

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.

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

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.

At the end, one didn't remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.

I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.

I find most men don't like a lot of makeup.

What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

You cannot innovate by copying.

The eye takes a person into the world. The ear brings the world into a human being.

Joseph Stalin is a titan of thought. His name is to be given to an entire century.