I wanted a picture that one felt more than one looked at. [...] The Chinese always talked about this feeling that exudes from a painting, you know; and I for a long time wanted something to come slowly to you. This thing has to be established between the painting and you. You can go up to it, looks like the dullest thing on earth as though no color at all. And you stand there a while and that color will come out to you.

America, my land with its great East-West parallels, with its shooting-up towers and space-eating lights - millions of them in the vast night sky.

Our ground today is not so much the national or the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth. The earth has been round for some time now, but not in man’s relations to man nor in the understanding of the arts of each as a part of the roundness. As usual we have occupied ourselves too much with the outer, the objective, at the expense of the inner world wherein the true roundness lies. [...]
Ours is a universal time and the significances of such a time all point to the need for the universalizing of the consciousness and the conscience of man. It is in the awareness of this that our future depends. [...] America more than any other country is placed geographically to lead in this understanding, and if from past methods of behavior she has constantly looked toward Europe, today she must assume her position, Janus-faced, toward Asia, for in not too long a time the waves of the Orient shall wash heavily upon her shores.
All this is deeply related with her growth in the arts, particularly upon the Pacific slopes. Of this I am aware. Naturally my work will reflect such a condition and so it is not surprising to me when an Oriental responds to a painting of mine as well as an American or a European. (1946)

I have no system - I never know when I can paint; I just have to arouse myself - get into a state and forget all things if possible to make a union with what I am doing and the less I think of it - the paintings and myself, the better the result. There is a famous Zen or Tao verse - in translation thus:
Behind the technique, know