Quotes from James Rosenquist

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

The very, very beginning is that my mother and father were aviators.

I went to the University of Minnesota, and I met this amazing artist named Cameron Boothe there who was in World War I, who studied with Hans Hoffman in Munich.

I decided to make pictures of fragments, images that would spill off the canvas instead of recede into it like a medicine cabinet. I wanted to find images that were in a 'nether-nether-land': things that were a little out of style but hadn't reached the point of nostalgia.

There was one reviewer from the 'New York Times,' I forget his name, who said I was 'death warmed over.' I wrote him back that I knew more about death than he did. The 'Times' fired him, put him in the cooking department!

Scientists say, 'There is no such thing as time; gravity is a dust from another universe, and outside our own universe are many, many universes in all directions.' They speculate that attached to these universes are probably 6,000 planets identical to Earth. So are there things living out there? Animals, people, anything?

I can handle ups and downs.

I'm the one who gave steroids to Pop art.

I hate getting old, but I'm sticking with it!

I painted billboards above every candy store in Brooklyn.

We may seem insignificantly small, but we exist. So I remain optimistic.

Certainly I have made comments on American society with the various pictures and have done about nine antiwar paintings. But I did them because I was incorporating my feelings into my work.

I think of my actions every day: what seems to be important and what isn't.

I don't do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences.

Many young artists, they look at the art world and think they can make a lot of money.

I hitchhiked to Miami in 1953, and there were oranges laying on the road, black shantytowns, and marinas with nice boats. The museums were virtually empty.