“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

“The meaning of a word — to me — is not as exact as the meaning of a colour. Colours and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this [1974] because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have often been told what to paint … I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen.”

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go”

“… he said, with sort of a little derisive smile, "How can you walk down the street with all this stuff going on inside you?" I said, "I don't know how you can walk down the street with nothing going on inside you.”

“It's like going back to being a child again. Someone to bathe you. Someone to lift you. Someone to wipe you. We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, It's just remembering how to enjoy it.”

“I wasn't just the madwoman in the attic--I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.”

“I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.”

“How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do"
"Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.”

“It's important for me to find different things and prove I can do them. … Someone told me that inside all actors are many sleeping princesses, and each time we do a role, one of those princesses wakes up. Inside us there is everything. We just have to look for it.”

“It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.”