Quotes by Jasper Johns

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.