Quotes from Jim Dine

For me, drawing is everything, because it informs everything. It even informs my poetry. It's the way I begin everything.

I've never had an easy relationship with critics. I hold a lot of homicide in my heart. If this was another time, I'd be packing a piece.

My life is really a history of observing forms and taking in imagery. I don't mean in a photographic way, I mean in a way of feeling them structurally.

I do not think that obsession is funny or that not being able to stop one's intensity is funny.

I work every day. I work all day. I've never had a holiday. It's all I really want to do. It's what I'm here for. . . . More and more, I'm just so grateful I was born an artist.

I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood.

Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another.

My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily about drawing. It's about making the best kind of image I can make, it's about talking as clearly as I can.

I have come to terms with a lot of things, because, when all's said and done, there's really very little one can do about a lot of things. You just accept them. The point is you just have to keep on working and you just have to keep on living.

The figure is still the only thing I have faith in in terms of how much emotion it's charged with and how much subject matter is there.