You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.

Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel.

If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.

I want to see how life can triumph.

When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

It was not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel.

Memory embellishes Life. Forgetfulness makes it possible.