Twombly Quotes

#1. I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive. I want to hear a rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich.

John Waters

#2. My favorite Twombly is 'Apollo and the Artist,' with the big 'Apollo' written across it.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

#3. I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the 'blue chip gays.' I mean people who have managed to become very, very famous and are still very famous partly through staying in the closet, like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Susan Sontag, Harold Brodkey and others.

Edmund White

#4. Twombly, frankly, was an acquired taste. I was not in love with Twombly the first time I saw one of his paintings.

Eli Broad

#5. I used to change things in my early paintings to get the nuance or feeling I wanted, but now I plan everything in my head before I do it.

Cy Twombly

#6. Virginia is a good start for Italy.

Cy Twombly

#7. I had my freedom and that was nice

Cy Twombly

#8. White paint is my marble.

Cy Twombly

#9. I never really separated painting and literature.

Cy Twombly

#10. Once I said to my mother: 'You would be happy if I just kept well-dressed and had good manners,' and she said: 'What else is there?'

Cy Twombly

#11. I work in an impatient way.

Cy Twombly

#12. I listed to Tchaikovsky. He is both kitsch and profound. I love that lack of "Good taste."

Cy Twombly

#13. To my mind, one does not put oneself in place of the past; one only adds a new link.

Cy Twombly

#14. It's absurd to talk about paintings that you haven't finished.

Cy Twombly

#15. I'm not an abstractionist completely.

Cy Twombly

#16. I hate roses. Don't you? It's all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.

Cy Twombly

#17. I don't work 9 to 5.

Cy Twombly

#18. Every line is the actual experience with its own unique story.

Cy Twombly

#19. The Mediterranean is always just white, white, white.

Cy Twombly

#20. And we who have always thought of happiness climbing, would feel the emotion that almost startles when happiness falls.

Cy Twombly

#21. When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.

Cy Twombly

#22. I work in waves, because I'm impatient. Because of a certain physicality, of lack of breath from standing. It has to be done and I do take liberties I wouldn't have taken before.

Cy Twombly

#23. Graffiti is linear, and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls.

Cy Twombly

#24. I was brought up to think you don't talk about yourself.

Cy Twombly

#25. I swear if I had to do this over again, I would just do the paintings and never show them.

Cy Twombly

#26. I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them, and I really liked having them around.

Cy Twombly

#27. Graffiti is usually a protest - ink on walls - or has a reason for being naughty or aggressive.

Cy Twombly

#28. Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don't like oil because you can't get back into it, or you make a mess. It's not my favourite thing ... pencil is more my medium than wet paint.

Cy Twombly

#29. I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time.

Cy Twombly

#30. My parents were from New England. It's very funny, but when I grew up, you always had to say, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'Yes, sir.'

Cy Twombly

#31. I look at a lot of artists. I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. Art comes from art.

Cy Twombly

#32. I have my pace and way of living, and I'm not looking for something.

Cy Twombly