- 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'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.
- To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.
- I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.
- 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.
- I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.
- One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.
- I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
- 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.
- 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.
- Making your unknown known is the important thing.
- Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.
- You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.
Want to learn more about Georgia O'Keeffe? Check out O'Keeffe's work on Pinterest and learn interesting facts about her here.