Georgia O'Keeffe > Quotes

“It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe

“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“To create one's own world takes courage.”
― georgia o'keeffe

“You are one of my nicest thoughts.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“One day a hummingbird flew in--
It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella--
--When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny--
...You were like the humming bird to me...
And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together--
--It is not that I fear the knowing--
It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I decided to accept as true my own thinking.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. ”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“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.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe, Some Memories of Drawings

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe