All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.

Every painter must traverse for himself that distance from Paris to Aix (where Paul Cézanne worked a lot, fh) or from Venice to Toledo (where El Greco painted a lot, fh). Expression is for one knowing its own pivot. Every expressor relates solely to himself -- that is the concern of the individualist.

I harp always on the 'idea' of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment.

My work has the abstraction underneath it all now and what I deliberately set out to do down here, for this is the perfect realistic abstraction in landscape.

(I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.. ...rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.

I have achieved the 'sacred' pilgrimage to Ktaadn MT -- exceeding all my expectations so far that I am sort of helpless with words. I feel as if I have seen God for the first time, and find him so nonchalantly solemn.

It is never difficult to see images -- when the principle of the image is embedded in the soul.

They are the gateway for our modern esthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most of all, the primitives of the way they have begun; they have voiced most of all the imperative need of essential personalism, of direct expression of direct experience.

My work is getting stronger and stronger and more intense all the time.... I have such a rush of new energy and notions coming into my head, over my horizon like chariots of fire that all I want is freedom to step aside and execute them.

The place (Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fh) is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. (it) looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge -- essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there.

I have come to the conclusion that it is better to have two colors in right relation to each other than to have a vast confusion of emotional exuberance... I had rather be intellectually right than emotionally exuberant.

By getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.. ...we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.

What have we all, we
who have nothing left but longing to be free
of our lashed satiety.