Perhaps no American artist is more associated with the U.S. flag than Pop Art icon Jasper Johns. Painter, sculptor, and printmaker, Johns used the flag as well as other American symbols as a springboard for his colorful meditations on what it means to be an American. In honor of Flag Day, here’s Johns on painting, art, and well, life.

"To be an artist you have to give up everything including the desire to be a good artist." — Jasper Johns

"I am not big on perfection." — Jasper Johns

"As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a confusion or a freedom." — Jasper Johns

"Every artist feels alone and isolated. Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself." — Jasper Johns

"I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea." — Jasper Johns

"I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying." — Jasper Johns