Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

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

That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world - bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars - but it makes living great - doesn't it - I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all and a lot of it too

I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

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.

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.

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.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life.

I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected.

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.

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

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.

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

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

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

I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.

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

I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky.

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

The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

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.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

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.

When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone.

I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things-... I must say I feel far away in another world here-... always we go to a new place...the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland.

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.

I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them.

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.

My first memory is of the brightness of light ... light all around. I was sitting among pillows on a quilt on the ground ... very large white pillows.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily.

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?

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.

Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.

I do not like the idea of happiness - it is too momentary - I would say that I was always busy and interested in something - interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.