Georgia O'Keeffe Quotations

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.

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

The days you work are the best days.

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

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

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

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.

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

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

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.

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

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.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

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

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

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

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

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

One can not 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

He was nothing but a tool. ... He had no thought, no part in the painting, except that he could do what I told him to do.

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

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.

Since I cannot sing, I paint.

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer

I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life - without knowing. After painting the shell and shingle many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle - the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted.

I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.

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

Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it's all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.

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

In the evening I go up in the desert and spend hours watching the sun go down, just enjoying it, and every day I go out and watch it again. I draw some and there is a little painting and so the days go by.

The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint ... that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.

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

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

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

I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.

That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world - bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars - but it makes living great - doesn't it - I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all and a lot of it too

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.

School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself ... I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for.

We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

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

One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going...

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

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

Fill a space in a beautiful way.

When you get so that you can't see, you come to it gradually. And if you didn't come by it gradually, I guess you'd just kill yourself when you couldn't see.

My center does not come from my mind - it feels in me like a plot of warm moist well tilled earth with the sun shining hot on it... It seems I would rather feel starkly empty than let any thing be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth...

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction.

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

One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the humming bird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.

Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper?

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

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

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.

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.

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

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically ...

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

Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.

I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?

When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone.

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

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

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.

Dearest - my body is simply crazy with wanting you - If you don't come tomorrow - I don't see how I can wait for you - I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours - the kisses - the hotness - the wetness - all melting together - the being held so tight that it hurts - the strangle and the struggle.

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

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.

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realise that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary.

I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things-... I must say I feel far away in another world here-... always we go to a new place...the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland.

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.

The simple fact of yourself... there it is... just you... no excitement about it... a very simple fact... the only thing you have... keep it as clear as you can.

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

I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things - I hate to show them - I am perfectly inconsistent about it - I am afraid people won't understand - and I hope they won't - and am afraid they will.

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.

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

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

Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.

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

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.

Before I put brush to canvas, I question, 'Is this mine? ...Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man? ...I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me.

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

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

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

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

I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them.