I am not an abstractionist.

    I am not an abstractionist. ... I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. ... I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!
        Conversations with Artists by Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93.; reprinted as "Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956" in Writings on Art : Mark Rothko (2006) edited by Miguel López-Remiro p. 119 books.google


    A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.
     As quoted in "Mark Rothko" by Dorothy Seiberling in LIFE magazine (16 November 1959), p. 52