Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

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

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

Fill a space in a beautiful way.

When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs.

To create one's own world takes courage.

The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

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

One cannot be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life.

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters.

I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

I have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off. I'd rather be doing something I wanted to do. I'd walk it again.

God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.

I've been afraid every single day of my life, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway.

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

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

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.

To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.

You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me,so natural to my way of being and thinking.

I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.

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

All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands ...

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.

The days you work are the best days.

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. (Life, March 1, 1968)

A flower is relatively small ... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

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

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

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

It seems to me very important to the idea of democracy to the country and to the world eventually that all men and women stand equal under the sky.

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier.

His letters ... have been like fine cold water when you are terribly thirsty ...

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

I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected.

My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.

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

I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.

I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life.

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

I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky.

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

Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.

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

The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.

I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

You are one of my nicest thoughts.

If only people were trees ... I might like them better.

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

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

I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily.

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

I've been terrified my whole life but it never kept me from doing a single thing.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

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

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them.

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 wish so much to go that I almost wish I had never been there.

I have not worked at all ... Nothing seems worth putting down - I seem to have nothing to say - it appalls me but that is the way it is.

I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least.

Since I cannot sing, I paint.