When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

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.

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

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.

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.

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

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