Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life

It's through discipline and tremendous disappointment and failure that you arrive at what it is you must paint.

My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.

My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They're just horizontal lines. There's not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.

What I say is that we're capable of a transcendent response, and I think it makes us happy. And I do think beauty produces a transcendent response.

When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.

The worst thing you can think about when you're working is yourself.