Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

- Jasper Johns

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.

- Jasper Johns

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

- Jasper Johns

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

- Jasper Johns

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

- Jasper Johns

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

- Jasper Johns

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

- Jasper Johns

To me, self-description is a calamity.

- Jasper Johns

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.

- Jasper Johns

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

- Jasper Johns

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.

- Jasper Johns

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

- Jasper Johns

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

- Jasper Johns

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

- Jasper Johns

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

- Jasper Johns

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

- Jasper Johns

I tend to like things that already exist.

- Jasper Johns

I am not strong on perfection.

- Jasper Johns

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

- Jasper Johns

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

- Jasper Johns