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.

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.

Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

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

You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody.

Art is the soul of a people.

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.