Norman Rockwell

“If a picture wasn't going very well, I'd put a puppy in it.”

“I don't know that I have a soul. I don't believe in God. I do believe in the Golden Rule.”

“Maybe as I grew up and found the world wasn't the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it would be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be, and so I painted only the ideal aspects of it.”

“The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and the ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.”

“Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”

“Some people have been kind enough to call me a genius. I think a better word for me is 'craftsman.'”

“Some folks think I painted the way I did because I was a saccharine, Pollyanna-ish guy. This is not true. I have a cynical side.”

“I was born a long time ago. And I'm a realist.”

“I'm not a modernist. I'm not an abstract artist. I've always been a realist.”

“Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.”

“The truth is, I'm a storyteller. That's what I do. I tell stories with pictures.”

“My life is my work. There is no other.”

“Art is a universal language.”

“I've always been a people-watcher. It's the most fascinating thing in the world.”

“The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.”

“I just paint life as I see it. I'm a storyteller.”

“I learned to draw everything. I was a machine.”