107 Quotes by Jasper Johns

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

I tend to like things that already exist.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.