Georgia OKeeffe Quotes

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.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.

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.

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 think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

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.

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

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

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

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

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.

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

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.

Fill a space in a beautiful way.

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

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.

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

I've been afraid every single day of my life, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway.

I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

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