Peter Max

“Marlon Brando came up to me many, many years ago. He wanted me to do a little doodle for him on the back of an airline ticket.”

“I stay busy, and it feels good.”

“I've done 44 portraits of Obama because he's the 44th president.”

“Get into your own creativity. Sketch and paint with different mediums and follow your heart.”

“I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.”

“There's nothing like New Orleans. When it comes back, it will be a tremendous highlight for America.”

“When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.”

“As I create art, it is like a love affair. My days go by loving what I do.”

“The '60s were an amazing time.”

“I grew up in Shanghai 'til I was 10 or 11, with one year in Tibet. When I was 5 or 6 years old, the American radio station came to Shanghai, and I used to love bebop and jazz, but I didn't know where it came from.”

“I walked out with 14 advertising projects.”

“I do not view myself as a psychedelic person but as a yogi. Although most link the Beatles with bringing awareness of yoga to the public, it was myself who actually brought yoga into the mainstream in the United States.”

“All day long, I'm creative, and the second I get a little tired of any given medium, I just shut that area down and go to the next room. I just go do something else.”

“Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Dead, Zeppelin, the Beatles - I paint to this music all of the time.”

“I love so many different types of music - hard rock, bebop, jazz fusion, R&B. And I've loved meeting and painting so many amazing artists like Lionel Richie, Ronnie Wood, Sia, Steven Tyler, Swizz Beatz, Taylor Swift, James Moody, The Fifth Dimension, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Michael Jackson. It makes me smile thinking about each one of them.”

“When I am in New York, you know, my studio is big, about 20,000 to 25,000 square feet, and I have painting rooms and rooms I do etching in, rooms I do lithographs.”

“My biggest love is still planets and stars. If I hadn't become an artist, I'd be an astronomer because I still love it so much.”

“I'm more American than anything else. I grew up in China, but I was fulfilled at a young age by American music. It was my biggest inspiration.”

“I love the title of 'hippy' because it means someone who is thinking cosmic and futuristic.”

“If I didn't choose art, I would have become an astronomer.”