Quotes from Jasper Johns

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

One works without thinking how to work.

When you work you learn something about what you are doing and you develop habits and procedures out of what you're doing.

One wants one's work to be the world, but of course it's never the world. The work is in the world; it never contains the whole thing.

My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.

Working is very important to me. Probably because as a child I was taught that work was good. I don't believe it intellectually but I identify with that idea. So it's probably just like a habit.

I am not strong on perfection.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.

I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don't usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate.

I'm working in my mind.

I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage... I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art.

I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.