Explore Quotes by James Turrell

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

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

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

I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.

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.

Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.

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

There are very few religious experiences that aren't explained using the vocabulary of light.

Art does, to some extent, follow economics.

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

There aren't many artists who can feel sorry for me.

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

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.

One way to understand light in the ocean of air is by flying it. Life in the air is an extension of perceiving.

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.

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.

I feel that buildings often have a workaday aspect that you see during the daylight hours, and a more resplendent side that emerges after dark.

Each day is a different length of time and that gives a different length to the cusp between light and darkness or darkness and light.

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

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.