“I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.”

Source: East of Eden

1950's
Source: Conversations with Artists, Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93.; reprinted as 'Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956', in Writings on Art: Mark Rothko (2006) ed. Miguel López-Remiro p. 119 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=ZdYLk3m2TN4C&pg=PA119
Context: I am not an abstractionist... I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else... I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!

Tolkien in Oxford (1968) http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml, a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966