Cy Twombly Quotations

I have my pace and way of living, and I'm not looking for something.

I swear if I had to do this over again, I would just do the paintings and never show them.

My parents were from New England. It's very funny, but when I grew up, you always had to say, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'Yes, sir.'

I was brought up to think you don't talk about yourself.

I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.

Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don't like oil because you can't get back into it, or you make a mess. It's not my favourite thing... pencil is more my medium than wet paint.

I listed to Tchaikovsky. He is both kitsch and profound. I love that lack of "Good taste."

I hate roses. Don't you? It's all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.

I work in waves, because I'm impatient. Because of a certain physicality, of lack of breath from standing. It has to be done and I do take liberties I wouldn't have taken before.

Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical.

I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time

I never really separated painting and literature.

When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.

And we who have always thought of happiness climbing, would feel the emotion that almost startles when happiness falls.

Every line is the actual experience with its own unique story.

It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting...It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning.

I had my freedom and that was nice

I sit for two or three hours and then in 15 minutes I can do a painting, but that's part of it. You have to get ready and decide to jump up and do it; you build yourself up psychologically, and so painting has no time for brush. Brush is boring, you give it and all of a sudden it's dry, you have to go. Before you cut the thought, you know?

To my mind, one does not put oneself in place of the past; one only adds a new link.

I used to change things in my early paintings to get the nuance or feeling I wanted, but now I plan everything in my head before I do it.

It's absurd to talk about paintings that you haven't finished.

Once I said to my mother: 'You would be happy if I just kept well-dressed and had good manners,' and she said: 'What else is there?'

I look at a lot of artists. I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. Art comes from art.

Graffiti is usually a protest - ink on walls - or has a reason for being naughty or aggressive.

Graffiti is linear, and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls.

The Mediterranean is always just white, white, white.