Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction.

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.

Self-discovery is a journey of questioning yourself.

Success shouldn't be revenge or a way to overwhelm the naysayers. If that is your reason, you are far from being content.

Twitter is most suitable for me. In the Chinese language, 140 characters is a novella.

The idea that Buddhism denies what is called in the West individual immortality is a mistake, so far as the Buddhist scriptures are concerned.

With my own music, I try to get away from things that are familiar and things that would be easy for me to go to.

I honor and protect my sensitivity.

I never had the financial means that the media said I had. I laugh when I hear the amounts, $400 million, $800 million. Where do they get this imagination?

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in, and not just casually observe. Whatever my part in it, just as an audience member, I find that exciting.

I understand how you could see something in the root of a tree, a crack in the wall, in an eroded stone or pebble. But marble? It comes off in blocks and doesn't evoke any image. It does not inspire.

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.