John Marin quotes:

Painting is like golf; the fewer strokes I take, the better the picture.

Don't everlastingly read messages into paintings - there's the Daisy - you don't rave over or read messages into it - you just look at that bully little flower - isn't that enough?

Give the paint a chance. Give the brush a chance.

Give the instruments a chance - their sounds are quite beautiful.

Give paint a chance to show itself entirely as paint.

A true work of art can stand many seeings, revealing anew at each seeing.

How to paint the landscape: First you make your bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then, and only then, can you paint the landscape.

A work of art is full of perhapses and maybesos. Where the perhapses are found, something has to be done about it. And since art deals wtih the perhapses and maybesos, and why not call it the consummate science...which gets its perfection from seemingly imperfection.

I must for myself insist that when finished, that is when all the parts are in place and are working, that now it has become an object and will therefore have its boundaries as definite as the prow, the stern, the sides, and bottom bound as a boat.

Art is not great. Music is not great. It's just that they tickle us. When one steadfastly refuses greatness - then and then only can the wonderful thing we call art be created.

Art is just a series of natural gestures. For God's sake, don't try to be artistic - all wild animals walk the same way.