Franz Kline Quotations

If you're a painter, you're not alone. There's no way to be alone.

The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: does the painter's emotions come across?

The nature of anguish is translated into different forms.

To be right is the most terrific personal state that nobody is interested in.

You instinctively like what you can't do.

The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: do the painter's emotions come across?

Half the world wants to be like Thoreau worrying about the noise of traffic on the way up to Boston; the other half use up their lives being part of that noise. I like the second half.

If I feel a painting I'm working on doesn't have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.

People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it,but this is not true.I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.

I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.

You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving.