Quotes from Norman Rockwell

Here in New England, the character is strong and unshakable.

I work from fatigue to fatigue at my age there's only so much daylight left.

I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him.

I didn't know what to expect from a famous movie star maybe that he'd be sort of stuck-up, you know. But not Gary Cooper. He horsed around so much... that I had a hard time painting him.

The '20s ended in an era of extravagance, sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash, but then the country picked itself up again, and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it.

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. We find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint.

I just wanted to do something important.

I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be so and painted only the ideal aspects of it - pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers . . . only foxy grandpas who played baseball with kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the back yard.

The View of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and the ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.

I'll never have enough time to paint all the pictures I'd like to.