Quotes from Georgia O'Keeffe

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.

I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished.

I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life - without knowing.

My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind.

I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderful people whom I can't take the time to know.

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.

I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees... sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces.

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.

We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.

I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all.

I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling.

The days you work are the best days.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.