Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.
Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.
If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.
A man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.
Innovations, which are the births of time.
The natures and dispositions of men are, not without truth, distinguished from the predominance of the planets.
Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness.
Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees...
A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.
One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from.
No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out.
I should have been, I don’t know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.
As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it’s true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working.
It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.
A cat will never drown if she sees the shore.
It is a great happiness when men’s professions and their inclinations accord.
If my people look as if they’re in a dreadful fix, it’s because I can’t get them out of a technical dilemma.
I want to make portraits and images. I don’t know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things you make coagulate and take on just the shape you intend. Totally accurate marks, which are outside representational marks.