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

A flower is relatively small... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

It seems to me very important to the idea of democracy to the country and to the world eventually that all men and women stand equal under the sky.

I'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit.

If only people were trees… I might like them better.

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.

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.