Quotes from James Rosenquist

When I got my first loft, I still didn't know what I was going to paint... There were long stretches when I just sat there and thought without interruption.

I feel lucky that I've been able to make a living from painting any idea that comes into my head.

I started billboard painting in Minneapolis, and I went to General Outdoor Advertising, and I said, 'I could do that.' They said, 'Oh yeah... we can always use a good man around here.'

I was on a panel with Marshall McLuhan in Canada. Someone says, 'Mr. McLuhan, I read your book, and I disagree with you.' And he says, 'Oh, you read my book? Then you only know half the story.'

When things become peculiar, frustrating and strange, I think it's a good time to start painting.

I stick the collages on the wall and, if I still like them after a month or two, I make a painting.

Warhol was questioning the capitalist society.

As a person gets older, time gets more interesting. As a kid, you waste so much of it.

Many of my old friends are gone now. I have a hard time dealing with the fact that they're just not there to talk to. I can't call them up for a rabbit-skin glue recipe anymore.

Nothing weighs on me. I don't feel any weight.

Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind.

I painted the Astor-Victoria sign seven times, and it's 395 feet wide and 58 feet high. I dropped a gallon of purple paint on Seventh Avenue and 47th Street from 15 stories up and didn't kill anybody. I dropped a brush at Columbus Circle. It fell on a guy's camel-hair coat.

I am getting old, so I really don't like clocks.

The automobile crash was... devastating in ways that I still cannot really bear to think about... It took me many years to recover. In some ways, I never have.

The only thing the Pop Artists had in common is that we all had been commercial artists in some manner. Lichtenstein was a draftsman; I was a billboard painter, but we didn't work together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964.

I'm interested in contemporary vision - the flicker of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Bing! Bang!

You live till you die, and that's the end of it. What good is your legacy when you are dead? I worry about being alive, selling work, having fun, moving and doing things when I am alive.

When I started out, I wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel. But I didn't have the content.

It's amazing how you meet people through other people. I knew a racecar driver, Stefan Johansson, who was very hot. He introduced me to Jean Todt. He introduced me to a French doctor. He introduced me to a French architect who redid the Louvre with I.M. Pei. He introduced me to Daniel Boulud.

People can remember their childhood, but events from four or five years ago are in a never-never land.

I am not in yesterday; I am not in tomorrow. I am right now.

The best thing about being an artist is the free clothing and getting to kiss pretty girls.

I learned a lot of painting tricks painting outside.

If a person is insane or troubled, you first have to get the person to admit that they have a problem before you can solve anything.