Explore Quotes by Norman Rockwell

If there was sadness in this creative world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems.

I'm still about as pigeon-toed as you can get. But I learned to manage pretty well on a bike. Should have had a bicycle then, when I was a kid, but our family didn't have the money for such luxuries. I saved up to buy one myself a few years later.

Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller.

No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He's got to put all his talent and feeling into them!

I'm the oldest antique in town.

If a picture wasn't going very well, I'd put a puppy in it.

Very interesting for an old duffer like me to try his hand at something new. If I don't do that once in a while, I might just turn into a fossil, you know!

I had a couple of million dollars' worth of... stock once. And now it's not worth much more than wallpaper. I guess I just wasn't born to be rich.

Travel is like a tonic to me. It's more than just getting away from the studio for a brief rest. I need it to recharge my batteries.

Some folks think I painted Lincoln from life, but I haven't been around that long. Not quite.

I learned to draw everything except glamorous women. No matter how much I tried to make them look sexy, they always ended up looking silly... or like somebody's mother.

The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.

If a picture wasn't going very well I'd put a puppy dog in it, always a mongrel, you know, never one of the full bred puppies. And then I'd put a bandage on its foot... I liked it when I did it, but now I'm sick of it.

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.