Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

I've been afraid every single day of my life, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.

I have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off. I'd rather be doing something I wanted to do. I'd walk it again.

We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)

Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished.

My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.

I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderful people whom I can't take the time to know.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

You are one of my nicest thoughts.

He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow - in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways - also my head - and I had to turn this way and that. There were nudes that might have been of several different people - sitting - standing - even standing upon the radiator against the window - that was difficult - radiators don't intend you to stand on top of them. (On being photographed by Alfred Stieglitz)

I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier.

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.

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

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the humming bird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.

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.

I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.

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.

Since I cannot sing, I paint.

Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.

The days you work are the best days.

His letters ... have been like fine cold water when you are terribly thirsty.

A flower touches everyone's heart.

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.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.

Dearest - my body is simply crazy with wanting you - If you don't come tomorrow - I don't see how I can wait for you - I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours - the kisses - the hotness - the wetness - all melting together - the being held so tight that it hurts - the strangle and the struggle.

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.

The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.