Mine are the Orient, the Occident, science, religion, cities, space, and writing a picture.

[...] Japanese vision which takes into account such small forms of life - gives them the dignity of a kakemona [...] it is this awareness to nature and everything she manifests which seems to charakterize the Japanese spirit. An awareness of the smallest detail of her vastness as though the whole were contained therein and that from a leaf, an insect, a universe appeared. (1934)

Am in San Francisco - here ten days painting hard. [...] The town is incredibly beautiful - more so than any other I have ever seen anywhere. [...] I feel strangely in space since returning [...] somehow more complete than ever, more concentrated and more quiet. (1934)

I used to go and look at light with people going into it and coming out of it. It made a light focus [...] they wanted light. [...] Those foci of light are highly magnetic. (Paris 1925/26)

[...] sirens, dynamic lights, brillant parades and returning heroes. An age of confusion and stepped-up rhythms. (Remembering the 20’s)

[...] the most revolutionary sensations I have ever had in art, because while one part of me was creating these two works, another was trying to hold me back. The old and the new were in battle. It may be difficult for one who doesn’t paint to visualize the ordeal an artist goes through when his angel of vision is being shifted. (Concerning Broadway and Welcome Hero, both 1935)

But then when the crowds came, there were so many people I began to paint crowds, because they flooded the markets, and they flooded the streets, and they worked all night. That's when I made all the crowd pictures you know. And then of course it gave me a chance for interlacing of small forms also. This abstract form of agitation of points in space and so on and so forth. This gave me a chance to do the same thing with figures. (Concerning Seattle at night)