The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.

The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

Black art has always existed. It just hasn't been looked for in the right places.

Art is the soul of a people.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.

Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.

If we knew all the answers, there will be no research.

Better the friend we can see than the money we cannot.

It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

I think the issue is that Americans traveling abroad if gotten into legal problems should have access to a fair trial and an impartial tribunal.

A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. The routine is exceptionally powerful.

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.

Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.

Don't think that you can just rely on natural talent because there are going to be times when you get a little tired and that's when your skills come into play to help you make look easy.

To love our success more than God and our neighbor hardens the heart, making us less able to feel and to sense.