I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.

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.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

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

I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.