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April 10, 2026
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"Donald Judd spoke of a 'neutral' surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used 'non' or 'not' – expressive – this is an early problem – a negative solution or – expression of new sense – which can help one into – what one has not known. 'Neutral' expresses an intention."
"..it seems to me that you could take the opposite point of view, and say that continuity (in language and in thought, B.K.) is the thing that is so distressing and that what one can do is attempt to create a discontinuous situation. It seems to me that continuity is almost a static concept. And since we have the concept of discontinuity it seems to me that it would be more interesting to attempt to establish that."
"..I don’t see any point in simply stating something that is easily available. But then that may just be my own psychology, a kind of negative position. It seems to me that if you avoid everything you can avoid, then you do what you can't avoid doing, and you do what is helpless, and unavoidable. That seems to me more interesting than any other position at this moment – for me anyway."
"I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage.. .I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art."
"Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?"
"The relationship between the object & the event. Can they 2 be separated? Is one a detail of the other? What is the meeting? Air?"
"My primary concern is visual form. The visual meaning may be discovered afterwards – by those who look for it. Two meanings have been ascribed to these American Flag paintings of mine. One position is: 'He's painted a flag so you don't have to think of it as a flag but only as a painting'. The other is: 'You are enabled by the way he has painted it to see it as a flag and not as a painting.' Actually both positions are implicit in the paintings, so you don't have to choose."
"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. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye."
"It all began with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it. So I want on to similar things like the targets things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. For instance, I've always thought of a painting as a surface; painting it in one color made this very clear.. .A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator."
"I made the flags and targets to open men's eyes.. ..[they] were both things - which are seen and not looked at - examined."
"[to see the painting]..as an object, as a real thing in itself. (quote on his Flag-paintings)"
"I make what it pleases me to make.. ..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. I intuitively paint flags."
"Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either of them might run out."
"Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young."
"Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself."
"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with those who are reckless with yours."
"Do one thing every day that scares you."
"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. ... [T]rust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine."
"Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere."
"Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them."
"One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of the 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country."
"We have to stop allowing economics to be used as a trump card. Capitalism is like math. It is amoral. It is good at producing wealth; it's bad at distributing wealth. Unless it operates within a moral framework it will produce an unjust society."
"Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law."
"If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations."
"If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation’s, we’d all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog."
"But regardless of whose fault it is, most politicians today are not human beings. You want to pry open their mouths and shout into the darkness, 'Hello! Is there a human being in there?' Buried under all that lust for office, all that fear of offending a contributor? I know there must be."
"When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise complete power over the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it’s because they want them in Lebanon."
"To the jury foreman in the second trial: "Mr. Rodriguez? Can I ask you a question? What do you think a grown man up in his 40s is doing sleeping with one little boy after the next, all by himself, locked up in his bedroom, every night? That doesn't bother you? It bothers me.""
"On the death penalty:(the argument that it costs more to appeal death row convictions than to imprison someone for life.) "Ken Starr gave me the perfect comeback on that," she scoffs. "How many millions of dollars were we willing to spend to show that the President had oral sex?""
"On on-air debates: "When I get into an argument on the air, the man can always yell louder, if a man fights like hell, he's being forceful; if I raise my voice and fight like hell, I'm being a shrew and a bitch.""
"On [defense lawyers]: "They lie, they cheat, they'll say anything. They walk a thin line that I don't even want to get near. Like in the David Westerfield case. They knew the whole time he did it, because he knew where her body was, and they used that as a bargaining chip to improve his situation. But when that didn't work [the police found the body on their own], they proceeded to drag the Van Dams through the mud. It's disgusting. Some people argue that the prosecution just wants to get a conviction. What joy would I get out of sending the wrong person to jail?""
"I'm on a search for the truth," she says during a recent visit to the District to promote her new book, "Objection!," in which the former prosecutor calls defense attorneys "dangerous" and compares them to pigs. The way Grace sees it, prosecutors want to do what's right, whereas defense attorneys are unethical and just want to win. She'd never cross over to what she calls the "dark side" because "I don't really want to have any part of getting guilty people off."
"On the second Michael Jackson trial, speaking on "Larry King Live," CNN, Feb. 21, 2003: "But I'm telling you, this boy, two-thirds of this can be corroborated by other people. So why would he lie about the molestation part? It is in graphic detail. It just seems true... I think Michael Jackson walks. And I think it's a disgrace. He's guilty.""
"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."
"Tolerance is the last virtue of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society that has blatantly, proudly, violated all of the commandments of God, there is one last virtue they insist upon: tolerance for their immorality. They will not have you condemning what they have done as being wrong, and they have created a belief system in which it is not, and in which they are no longer the criminal or the villain or the evil person, but you are!"
"The intimate coupling of two men or two women is not marriage. It is a pale and misshapen counterfeit that will only serve to empty marriage of its meaning and destroy the institution that is the keystone in the arch of civilization … Marriage is the sine qua non for healthy children and a stable society. It is 'fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race'..."
"How much more forcefully can I say it? The time has come, and it is long overdue, when Christians and conservatives and all men and women who believe in the birthright of freedom must rise up and reclaim America for Jesus Christ."
"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ."
"Ty Cobb liked sentimentality in his opponents, because he had none himself. Baseball, he said, is something like a war."
"Ty Cobb is one of the great natural forces of Baseball. He is testament to how far you can get simply through will. I don’t think Ty Cobb had tremendous, tremendous natural ability. I don’t think he would be a great athlete today. But his intensity, his drive, was unparalleled. Cobb was pursued by demons from his childhood, from his parentage, from his racial consciousness, and he took out all of his aggressions on the playing fields. Everyone was his enemy. It was easy for Cobb to play the game of Baseball as if it were the game of Life and it was a violent struggle, every day: 154 games a year."
"The greatness of Ty Cobb was something that had to be seen, and to see him was to remember him forever."
"Yes, he's a prick, but he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit!"
"They say I used to scare pitchers just by strolling to the plate but those guys always had a remedy for me. Whenever they were afraid I'd knock one out of the park, they'd walk me and their worries would be over. But once Cobb got on base then their worries really began. He would upset not only the pitcher or catcher, but the infield as well by going from first to third on a sacrifice bunt, scoring from second on an infield out, taking two bases on an outfield fly and making delayed steals. Fans still talk about the home run I hit in the 1932 World Series off Charley Root of the Cubs after I pointed to the rightfield stands. Well, I once remember Cobb beating out four bunts down the third base line in one game against Billy Bradley, a wonderful third baseman for Cleveland. That was after Cobb warned Bradley he would bunt to him every time he got up. Another time Cobb warned Lou Criger, a great catcher with Boston, that he would steal second, third and home on him first chance he got. Well, the first time up Cobb walked and on three pitches stole second, third and home against the dumbfounded Criger."
"Make no mistake about that. The old boy was the greatest player I ever saw or hope to see. When I was pitching I had fair success against all the other great hitters, but Cobb was one guy I never could get out. I had a reputation for being a slugger and I guess I could hit 'em pretty far at that, but that guy Cobb could do everything--better than any player I ever saw. Old Georgia Peach was a great hitter, a spectacular fielder, a wonderful thrower and oh boy, how he could run."
"A comparison of Cobb's and Babe Ruth's batting forms is interesting since these two players, both left-handed hitters, are probably the outstanding exponents of the two batting vogues. Cobb used a choke grip with hands apart so that he could better control the bat. If he kept his hands apart on the handle, he could hit to left or center. By sliding his hands together as he swung, he could hit to right field. Of course he sacrificed power, but hits were what he wanted. Ruth was different. Ruth took a swipe at the ball, using a golfing swing, loose and easy with a slight upward motion. Ruth stood with his feet fairly close together in the back of the batting box, and took a long stride forward as he swung. He hit with his entire body coming around on the swing which gave him tremendous follow-through. Most of his home runs were towering flies that simply carried out of the park, but they were the longest flies any man has hit before or since. And yet Ruth declared that Cobb's batting stance was soundest. "I'm paid to hit home runs," the big walloper of the Yankees declared in his book on baseball. "In a way, that's a handicap. I've got to hit from my heels with all the power in my body, which isn't good batting style. And the greatest tribute I can pay to Ty Cobb is this: If I wasn't expected to drive the ball out of the lot every time I came up to the plate, I'd change my batting form tomorrow. I'd copy Cobb's style in every single thing he does.""
"The incident illustrates a batting skill that every boy can acquire with practice- place-hitting. Place-hitters, also called choke hitters because they choke their grip on the bat, snap the stick with their forearms and punch the ball through any opening in the diamond which the infield may leave them. Cobb was probably the greatest place-hitter of them all with the possible exception of Willie Keeler, diminutive marvel of the old Baltimore Orioles, a star of an earlier era. I am going to refer frequently to Ty Cobb in this chapter because he was the greatest baseball player who ever lived."
"Several years ago Ty Cobb, the veteran manager of the Detroit American League baseball team, put on his gray uniform and walked on the field at Yankee Stadium, New York City, an hour before a scheduled game between Detroit and New York. He was alert, aggressive and keen-eyed, nearing forty years of age. He had to walk past the New York dugout where the World's Champion Yankees were sitting. "Howdy, gentlemen," said Cobb. "Howdy yourself," retorted the Yankees. Then Urban shocker, Yankee pitcher, decided to have a little fun. "Isn't it time to take that uniform off, old man, and quit kidding the public?" he razzed. Cobb laughed tolerantly at this sally and went to the plate for hitting practice. "Hit one into left field," one of the Yankees shouted, and thereupon innocently precipitated an exhibition of baseball place-hitting that old-timers still talk about. "All right!" said Cobb. He promptly faced the hitting practice pitcher and drove a terrific liner into the left field stands. "Now one to center!" the Yankees yelled. "O.K.," replied Cobb, and timing the pitch beautifully, shot a grass-burner over second base. "Let's see you hit the next one to the right!" the New Yorkers dared and quick as lightning the Georgia Peach whipped a fast ball to the desired locality. "Now foul one into your dugout," the New York players called, jokingly. With a grim smile, Cobb fouled the next delivery, not into the Tiger dugout, but straight among the Yankees themselves, who tumbled over one another to avoid being hit by the ball. "Is that all for today, gentlemen?" Cobb asked."
"Ty Cobb wanted to play...but none of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!"
"The more his fires burned the more that provoked him on the field and I suppose one could say that the happy byproduct was the extraordinary baseball that he gave the fans at the time, but ... uh, there's a moment when you have to say it's not worth it. I think that Ty Cobb in his totality is an embarrassment to baseball."
"He had a screw loose. I never knew anyone like him. It was like his brain was miswired so that the least damned thing would set him off."