I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer.

Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on.

My art has no object, no image, no point of focus.

I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space. My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience.

There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.

The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven't given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman... Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.

When you sit down and see someone play at a piano, you don't think, 'Wow - what a fantastic machine.'

The wonderful thing about being an artist in L.A. is that there is no taste. There's anarchy of taste, which seems good to me.

If you're not an optimist, forget being an artist.

I know that science is very interested in answers, and I'm just happy with a good question.

The Quakers don't believe in music or art; they think it's a vanity.

There's truth in light. You can tell what elements a star is composed of and the temperature at which it burns by the light it gives off.

I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.

Planets' orbits are elliptical. It's a very pleasing shape.

I haven't been that great at attending my own openings. Still, I'm learning to enjoy this a lot more than I used to.

I don't think my work is about the spiritual life, but it certainly touches on it.

If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.

I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing.

I don't worry about whether anyone knows anything about art.

The people in L.A. do orient themselves to light. I used to call it 'Tan Fascist Culture.' Everyone there is tanned, wears dark sunglasses, looks like a movie star even when they're not.

Usually we are illuminating things instead of looking at the light itself. But I like this quality of the light being the revelation.

It's difficult for people to visualize from my drawings what it's going to be, so I often find myself talking them into things that they go along with, and when they see what's been made, they are surprised.

I have made things for Calvin Klein and other designers, and it's interesting to see the way each person approaches it.

Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.

I hope that when you see my work, you are looking at yourself looking.

I'm interested in light. It's a very direct, pragmatic, American, rather naive approach.

There was a time when I restored antique planes to support my art habit.

There are different stages when you fly. The first stage is the dollhouse effect, seeing everything on Earth like it's a model. Suddenly, all of your concerns seem very small.

I was waiting for L.A. to always become something important. I gave up... I left in 1974.

I used to think that only people who were crazy were attracted to the desert, but once you've lived there, you become that way anyway.

New York has changed amazingly; it's gentrified everywhere, and it's a much gentler place.

It's really terrific to see Pittsburgh recognize the Mattress Factory.

I always thought that people who live in the desert are a little crazy. It could be that the desert attracts that kind of person, or that after living there, you become that. It doesn't make much difference. But now I've done my 40 years in the desert.

To some degree, to control light, I have to have a way to form it, so I use form almost like the stretcher bar of a canvas.

I've always wanted to make a light that looks like the light you see in your dream.

I don't want you looking at the light fixture; I want you looking at where light goes. But more than that, I'm interested in the effect of light upon you and your perceptions.

Art history is littered with work that involves light.

In Arizona, we're at 7,000 feet, so we're above half of the world's atmosphere. It's crisp but hard, a side-raking light that can be revealing but doesn't have the softness that maritime air has.

I started out with projected-light works and working indoors, but I'd prepare the walls - by sanding, etcetera - the way you'd prepare a canvas for painting.

I am interested in the physicality of light itself.

Art does, to some extent, follow economics.

I live in the sky as a pilot, so it has great meaning to me.

If you just add all the time, add more and more light, it loses its meaning.

The lunar cycle within the solar season: that kind of syncopated rhythm is what life relates to.

If you think about art, if you look at Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio, if you look at Turner and Constable and all the Impressionists and the Hudson River School, there's a tradition of light in art, especially painting.

From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.

In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it's often wonderful that we don't have hindsight.

It's possible to gather light that's older than our solar system.

Las Vegas is about distraction.