Very interesting for an old duffer like me to try his hand at something new. If I don't do that once in a while, I might just turn into a fossil, you know!

No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He's got to put all his talent and feeling into them!

Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller.

I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor.

The Balopticon [a machine that projects photos on canvas to trace the lines] is an evil, inartistic, habit-forming, lazy and vicious machine! It also is a useful, time-saving, practical and helpful one. I use one often-and am thoroughly ashamed of it. I hide it whenever I hear people coming.

I learned to draw everything except glamorous women. No matter how much I tried to make them look sexy, they always ended up looking silly... or like somebody's mother.

Eisenhower had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out.