Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

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.

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.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

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

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.

I want to see how life can triumph.