Bob Ross

"In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers. But when I get home, the only thing I have power over is the garbage."

"I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do."

"People have success with this method and it gets them excited. It gets them hooked. You can put layers of thick paint on thin paint and that allows you to complete a painting in one sitting."

"Within one hour of touching the brush to canvas for the first time, my students have a total, complete painting."

"I have to paint fast on television because of the limited time, but I don't want people to see what I'm showing them as work, something to worry and fret over. This is supposed to be fun."

"Traditionally, art has been for the select few. We have been brainwashed to believe that Michaelangelo had to pat you on the head at birth. Well, we show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about."

"I've never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It's funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, 'We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you're doing, because you're sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.'"

"Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you're willing to practice, you can do."

"We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents. And that's when you really experience the joy of painting."

"Absolutely have to have dark in order to have light. [...] Gotta have opposites – dark and light, light and dark – continually in a painting. If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing. [...] You know, it's like in life: you've gotta have a little sadness once in a while, so you know when the good times come. I'm waiting on the good times now."

"Happy painting and God Bless, my friend."

"Let's build us a happy, little cloud that floats around the sky."

"Little more black, little more blue. And we'll just put that in using little crisscross strokes or--or little X's, whatever you want to call them. Whatever."