Faith Ringgold Quotes

#1. I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy.

Faith Ringgold

#2. I will always remember
when the stars fell down around me
and lifted me up above
the George Washington Bridge.

Faith Ringgold

#3. I guess I had fun doing it but it has hard memories for me.

Faith Ringgold

#4. Anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can't get to any other way. The next thing you know, you're flying among the stars.

Faith Ringgold

#5. I just feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world being able to do what I love and be able to do it all day every day if I like, you know, I mean it's great, I love it.

Faith Ringgold

#6. I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life.

Faith Ringgold

#7. Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I'm thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it's our front, it's our face.

Faith Ringgold

#8. When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt.

Faith Ringgold

#9. I always knew I wanted to be somebody. I think that's where it begins. People decide, "I want to be somebody. I want to make a contribution. I want to leave my mark here." Then different factors contribute to how you will do that.

Faith Ringgold

#10. I had this idea that I wanted to do this mixture of visions of African American women and visions of African American men. And call it 'The Men' and call it 'The Women' and show different faces of these two people.

Faith Ringgold

#11. I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man.

Faith Ringgold

#12. Less is even less, and more is still not quite enough.

Faith Ringgold

#13. Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it.

Faith Ringgold

#14. I think that has been a benefit to me because I think most people understand quilts and not a lot of people understand paintings. But yet they're looking at one.

Faith Ringgold

#15. You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it

Faith Ringgold

#16. I'm not so presumptuous to feel that they're gonna get it right away, get exactly what I have in mind. I hope that they'll enjoy looking at it at any rate, whatever it is. And that's why I started writing stories on my work.

Faith Ringgold