Persons [ ] I Have a Single Track Mind | Georgia O’Keeffe, 1887-1986
“My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.”
“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.”
“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 decided to accept as true my own thinking.”
“Filling a space in a beautiful way – that is what art means to me.”
“I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It’s like
getting acquainted with a person, and I don’t get acquainted easily.”
“Making your unknown known is the important thing – and keeping the unknown
always beyond you – catching – crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life –
only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead – that you must
always keep working to grasp.”
“I want real things … music that makes holes in the sky.”
“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.”
“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.”
“If you take a flower in your hand and really
look at it, it’s your world for a moment.”
“I do not like the idea of happiness – it is too momentary – I would say that I was
always busy and interested in something – interest has more meaning to me
than the idea of happiness.”
“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.”
“If only people were trees… I might like them better.”
“I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper
than models and they don’t move.”
“When people read erotic symbols into my painting,
they’re really thinking about their own affairs.”
“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.”
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1887-1986
Georgia O’Keeffe hitching a ride to Abiquiú, Ghost Ranch, 1944
