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

The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint. That was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.

The days you work are the best days.

I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

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 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 don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?