Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.

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.

Painting is the act of discovery and you're constantly enlarging your horizon or finding yourself every time you paint.

The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue

What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.